THE  OSBORNES 


THE    OSBORNES 


BY 
E.    F.    BENSON 


NEW  YORK 

GROSSET  &  DUNLAP 

PUBLISHERS 


ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED,   INCLUDING    THAT   OF  TRANSLATION 
INTO  FOREIGN    LANGUAGES,   INCLUDING  THE   SCANDINAVIAN 

COPYRIGHT,  1909,  1910,  BY  DOUBLEDAY,  PAGE  &  COMPANY 
PUBLISHED,  OCTOBER,    igiO 


THE  COUNTRY  LttE  PB£SS,  GABDEN  CITY,  ZT. 


THE  OSBORNES 


2134548 


THE   OSBORNES 

CHAPTER  I 

FOR  the  last  five  hours  all  the  windows  along  the 
front  of  the  newest  and  whitest  and  most  pre- 
tentious and  preposterous  house  in  Park  Lane  had 
been  blazing  with  lights,  which  were  kindled  while 
the  last  flames  of  the  long  July  day  had  scarcely  died 
down  into  the  ash-coloured  night,  and  were  still  shining 
when  morning  began  to  tinge  the  velvet  gray  of  the 
sky  with  colour  and  extinguish  the  stars.  The  lights, 
however,  in  No.  92  seemed  to  be  of  more  durable 
quality  than  the  heavenly  constellations  and  long  after 
morning  had  come  and  the  early  traffic  begun  to  boom 
on  the  roadway,  they  still  burned  with  undiminished 
splendour.  It  was  literally  true,  also,  that  all  the 
windows  in  the  long  Gothic  facade  which  seemed  to 
have  strayed  from  Nuremberg  into  the  West  End  of 
London,  had  been  ablaze;  not  only  was  the  ground 
floor  lit,  and  the  first  floor,  where  was  the  ballroom,  out 
of  which,  all  night,  had  floated  endless  webs  of  per- 
petual melody,  but  the  bedrooms  above,  though  sleep 
then  would  have  been  impossible,  and,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  they  were  yet  untenanted,  had  been  equally 
luminous,  while  from  behind  the  flamboyant  balustrade 
along  the  top  of  the  house,  smaller  windows,  which 

3 


4  THE    OSBORNES 

might  be  conjectured  to  belong  to  servants'  rooms, 
had  joined  in  the  general  illumination.  This  was 
strictly  in  accordance  with  Mrs.  Osborne's  orders,  as 
given  to  that  staid  and  remarkable  person  called  by  her 
(when  she  forgot)  Willum  and  (when  she  remembered) 
Thoresby,  and  (also  when  she  remembered)  alluded  to 
as  "my  major  domo."  "Willum"  he  had  been  in  earlier 
and  far  less  happy  years,  first  as  boot  boy,  then  when 
the  family  blossomed  into  footmen,  as  third,  second,  and 
finally  first  of  his  order.  Afterward  came  things 
more  glorious  yet  and  Thoresby  was  major  domo.  At 
the  present  time  Mrs.  Osborne  had  probably  forgotten 
that  there  existed  such  officers  as  boot  boys,  and  Willum 
probably  had  forgotten  too.  The  rise  of  the  family 
had  been  remarkably  rapid,  but  he  had  kept  pace 
with  it,  and  to-night  he  felt,  as  did  Mrs.  Osborne, 
'that  the  eminence  attained  by  them  all  was  of  a  very 
exalted  order. 

Mrs.  Osborne  had  ordered  that  every  window  in  the 
front  of  the  house  was  to  be  lit,  and  this  sumptuous 
edict  was  not  without  purpose.  She  said  it  looked 
more  joyful  and  what  was  a  little  electric  light,  and  as 
the  evening  had  been  devoted  to  joy,  it  was  right  that 
the  house  should  reflect  this  quality.  For  herself, 
she  felt  very  joyful  indeed;  the  last  month  or  two  had, 
it  is  true,  been  arduous,  and  in  all  London  it  is  probable 
that  there  had  been  nobody,  man  or  woman,  more 
incessantly  occupied.  But  had  there  been  an  eight  hours 
bill  introduced  and  passed,  which  should  limit  the  hours 
of  energy  for  hostesses,  she  would  have  scorned  to 
take  advantage  of  so  pusillanimous  a  measure.  Besides, 


THE    OSBORNES  5 

the  nature  of  her  work  necessitated  continuous  effort, 
for  her  work  was  to  effect  the  siege  and  secure  the 
capitulation  of  London.  That,  with  her  great  natural 
shrewdness,  she  realized  had  to  be  done  quickly,  or 
it  would  never  be  done  at  all.  London  had,  not  to  be 
starved,  but  to  be  stuffed  into  surrender.  She  had  to 
feed  it  and  dance  it  and  ply  it  with  concerts  and  plays 
and  entertainments  till  its  power  of  resistance  was 
sapped.  Long  quiet  sieges,  conducted  with  regularity, 
however  untiring,  were,  she  knew  well,  perfectly 
incapable  of  accomplishing  its  fall.  The  enemy  — 
at  times,  though  she  loved  it  so  well,  she  almost  con- 
sidered London  to  be  her  enemy  —  must  be  given  no 
quarter  and  no  time  to  consider  its  plans.  The  assault 
had  to  be  violent  as  well  as  untiring;  the  dear  foe  must 
be  battered  into  submission.  To  "arrive"  at  all,  you 
had  to  gallop.  And  she  had  galloped,  with  such  suc- 
cess that  on  this  night  in  July,  or  rather  on  this  cool 
dewy  morning  in  July,  she  felt  that  the  capitulation 
was  signed  and  handed  her.  But  she  felt  no  chill  of 
reaction,  as  is  so  often  the  case  even  in  the  very  moment 
of  victory,  when  energies  not  only  can  be  relaxed,  but 
must  be  relaxed  since  there  is  nothing  for  them  to 
brace  themselves  over  any  more.  Her  victory  was  of 
different  sort:  she  knew  quite  well  that  she  would 
have  to  go  on  being  extremely  energetic,  else  the 
capitulated  garrison  would  by  degrees  rally  again. 
But  since  the  exercise  of  these  energies  was  delightful 
to  her,  she  was  merely  charmed  that  there  would  be  a 
continual  call  for  them. 
There  was  no  "casement  jessamine"  on  the  house, 


6  THE    OSBORNES 

which  could  "stir  to  the  dancers  dancing  in  tune"  but  on 
the  walls  of  the  lowest  story,  growing  apparently  from 
large  earthenware  pots  filled  with  mould,  were  enormous 
plants  of  tin  ivy  which  swarmed  up  the  walls  of  the 
house.  But  it  was  too  strongly  and  solidly  made 
to  stir  even  to  the  vibration  produced  by  the  earth- 
quaking motor-buses  which  bounced  down  Park  Lane, 
and  thus  the  dancers  dancing  in  tune  had  no  effect 
whatever  on  it.  This  stalwart  ivy  was  indeed  a  sort 
of  symbol  of  the  solidity  of  the  fortunes  of  the  house, 
for  it  was  made  at  the  manufactories  from  which 
her  husband  derived  his  really  American  wealth. 
They  covered  acres  of  ground  at  Sheffield,  and  from 
their  doors  vomited  forth  all  sorts  of  metallic  hard- 
ware of  the  most  reliable  quality.  The  imitation  ivy, 
of  course,  was  but  a  froth,  a  chance  flotsam  on  the 
stream  of  hardware,  and  was  due  to  the  inventive 
genius  of  Mrs.  Osborne's  eldest  son  Percy,  who  had  a 
great  deal  of  taste.  His  was  no  abstruse  taste,  like  an 
appreciation  of  caviare  or  Strauss,  that  required  an 
educated  —  or,  as  others  might  say  —  a  vitiated 
palate  or  a  jaded  ear,  but  it  appealed  strongly  and 
almost  overwhelmingly,  to  judge  by  the  order  book 
of  the  Art  Department,  to  the  eye  of  that  general  public 
which  goes  in  for  forms  of  decoration  which  are  known 
as  both  chaste  and  "handsome,"  and  are  catholic  enough 
to  include  mirrors  framed  in  plush  on  which  are  painted 
bunches  of  flowers,  and  bead  curtains  that  hang  over 
doors.  With  shrewd  commercial  instinct  Percy  never 
attempted  to  educate  the  taste  of  his  customers  into 
what  they  ought  to  want,  but  gave  them  in  "handsome" 


THE    OSBORNES  7 

catalogues  lists  of  the  things  they  did  want,  and  of  a 
quality  that  they  would  be  sure  to  find  satisfactory. 
Though  this  ivy,  for  instance,  was  from  the  excellence 
of  its  workmanship  and  the  elaborate  nature  of  its 
colouring  rather  expensive,  it  was  practically  indestruct- 
ible till  the  melting  point  of  the  best  tin  was  reached, 
and  it  resembled  ivy  so  closely  that  you  might  per- 
fectly well  prick  your  fingers  on  it  before  you  found 
out  the  art  that  so  closely  imitated  nature.  Indeed, 
before  now  some  very  pretty  jesting  had  taken  place 
in  the  windows  of  the  house  with  regard  to  it,  when 
Percy,  who  liked  his  joke  (amid  the  scarcely  suppressed 
merriment  of  the  family),  asked  a  stranger  to  pick  a 
leaf  of  it  and  examine  the  beauties  of  nature  as  illus- 
trated in  the  manner  in  which  the  stalk  of  the  leaf 
was  joined  to  the  parent  stem.  Also  it  had  no  incon- 
venient habits  of  growing  over  places  on  which  you 
did  not  wish  it  to  trespass  (if  you  wanted  more,  you 
ordered  more),  it  harboured  neither  slugs  nor  any 
abominable  insects  and  afforded  no  resting-place  for 
birds,  while  it  could  be  washed  free  from  London  dust 
by  the  simple  application  of  the  hand-syringe. 

The  ivy  has  been  insisted  on  at  some  little  length 
because  it  was  typical  of  the  fortunes  and  family  of  its 
inventor.  It  was  solid,  indestructible  and  new,  and 
in  just  the  same  way  the  Osbornes  were  very  strong 
and  well,  held  large  quantities  of  gilt-edged  stock,  and 
had  no  family  history  whatever.  In  one  point  only 
were  they  unlike  the  ivy  that  clung  to  the  limestone 
wall  of  the  house  in  Park  Lane,  but  that  was  an  import- 
ant one.  The  point  of  the  ivy  was  to  deceive  —  it 


8  THE    OSBORNES 

was  often  successful  in  so  doing  —  while  the  Osbornes 
never  intended  to  deceive  anybody.  There  was,  with 
regard  at  any  rate  to  Mrs.  Osborne,  her  husband,  and 
Percy,  no  possibility  of  being  taken  in.  You  could  see 
at  once  what  they  were  like ;  a  glance  would  save  you 
any  subsequent  disappointment  or  surprises.  And  no 
one,  it  may  be  added  at  once,  ever  pricked  his  fingers 
over  them.  They  were  as  kind  as  they  were  new.  But 
since  many  strains  of  blood  have  gone  to  the  making 
of  each  member  of  the  human  race,  one  strain  prosper- 
ing and  predominating  in  this  specimen  while  in 
another,  though  of  the  same  blood,  it  scarcely  shows 
a  trace  of  existence,  the  divergence  of  type  even  in  one 
generation  is  often  very  marked  indeed.  Thus,  though 
Mr.  Osborne  felt  that  he  both  understood  and  admired 
his  eldest  son,  his  admiration  for  the  younger  was 
agreeably  tempered  with  mystification.  "Old  Claude's 
a  rum  fellow,"  he  often  said,  and  Mrs.  Osborne  agreed 
with  him.  But,  as  will  be  seen,  there  was  still  much 
in  common  between  Claude  and  them. 

The  house,  like  the  ivy,  was  also  new  and  solid  and 
in  point  of  fact  none  of  its  inhabitants,  again  with 
the  curious  exception  of  Claude,  were  quite  used  to  it 
yet.  This  they  concealed  as  far  as  they  were  able, 
but  the  concealment  really  went  little  further  than 
the  fact  that  they  did  not  openly  allude  to  it.  They 
all  agreed  that  the  house  was  very  handsome,  and  Mr. 
Osborne  had  a  secret  gratification  not  unmingled  with 
occasional  thrills  of  misgiving  as  to  whether  he  had 
wasted  his  money  in  the  knowledge  of  the  frightful 
costliness  of  it.  Outside,  as  has  been  said,  it  was 


THE    OSBORNES  9 

of  Gothic  design;  but  if  a  guest  thought  that  he  was 
to  pass  his  evening  or  listen  to  music  in  a  Gothic  interior, 
he  would  have  been  rudely  undeceived.  It  had  been 
unkindly  said  that  you  went  through  a  Gothic  door  to 
find  Vandals  within,  and  if  Vandalism  includes  the 
appropriation  of  beautiful  things,  the  Vandalism  ex- 
hibited here  was  very  complete.  But  the  destructive 
side  of  Vandalism  had  no  counterpart;  Mr.  Osborne 
was  very  careful  of  his  beautiful  things  and  very  proud 
of  them.  He  admired  them  in  proportion  to  their 
expensiveness,  and  having  an  excellent  head  for  figures 
could  remember  how  much  all  the  more  important 
pictures,  articles  of  furniture,  and  tapestries  had  "stood 
him  in."  And  he  ran  no  risk  of  forgetting  these  items, 
for  he  kept  them  green  in  his  memory  by  often  speak- 
ing of  them  to  his  guests. 

"Yes,"  he  would  say,  "there's  three  thousand  pounds 
worth  of  seating  accommodation  in  this  very  drawing- 
room,  and  they  tell  me  'twas  lucky  to  have  got  the  suite 
at  that  figure.  All  Louis  —  Louis  —  Per,  my  boy, 
did  they  tell  us  it  was  Louis  XV.  or  XVI.  ?  Sixteenth, 
yes,  Louis  XVI.  Divide  it  up  and  you'll  find  that  it 
averages  two  hundred  pounds  a  chair.  Seems  funny 
to  sit  on  two  hundred  pounds,  hey?  Mrs.  Osborne, 
she  said  a  bright  thing  about  that.  'Sit  firm  then,' 
she  said,  'and  you'll  keep  it  safe.' ' 

The  furnishing  and  appointments  of  the  house  had 
in  fact  been  entrusted  to  a  notable  firm,  which  though 
it  had  certainly  charged  Mr.  Osborne  a  great  deal  of 
money  for  what  it  supplied,  had  given  him  very  good 
value  for  his  cheque,  and  both  he  and  his  wife,  after 


io  THE    OSBORNES 

they  had  got  over  the  unusual  feeling  of  sitting  on  two 
hundred  pounds,  and  if  you  chose  putting  your  feet 
up  on  another  two  hundred,  were  quite  content  that 
both  the  furniture  of  this  Louis  XVI.  room  for  instance 
and  the  cheque  for  it,  should  be  what  they  called  a 
"little  stiff."  It  was  the  same  in  the  Italian  room  that 
opened  out  of  it,  and  matters  were  no  better  in  the 
dining  room,  which  was  furnished  with  Chippendale. 
Here  indeed  a  very  dreadful  accident  had  happened 
on  the  first  evening  that  they  had  got  into  the  house, 
now  two  months  ago,  for  Mr.  Osborne,  alone  with  Percy 
and  his  wife  for  that  night,  had  drawn  his  chair  up  to 
the  fire  —  the  night  being  chilly  —  to  drink  his  second 
and  third  glasses  of  port  and  had  rested  his  feet  on  the 
pierced  steel  fender  that  guarded  the  hearth.  This 
led  to  his  tilting  his  Chippendale  chair  back  on  to  its 
hind  legs,  which,  designed  to  bear  only  half  the  weight 
of  its  occupant,  had  crashed  into  splinters  and  deposited 
Mr.  Osborne  on  the  floor  and  his  second  glass  of  port 
on  his  shirt  front.  But  he  had  taken  the  incident  with 
great  good-humour. 

"Live  and  learn,"  he  had  said,  "live  and  learn.  Got 
to  sit  up  and  behave  now,  Maria.  Per,  my  boy,  don't 
you  finish  all  the  port  while  your  dad  changes  his 
shirt.  Drink  fair,  for  fair  play's  a  jewel,  and  fill  your 
mother's  glass." 

Mr.     Osborne    would    never    have     attained     to 

the    eminence    he    occupied    as    a    manufacturer    of 

hardware,  had   he   not   been  a  man  of   intelligence, 

instead   of  upbraiding  the   furnishing  firm   for 

charging  so  high  a  price  for  a  "four  legs  of  carved  dry 


THE    OSBORNES  11 

rot"  which  a  momentary  irritation  carefully  kept  to 
himself  might  have  led  him  to  do,  drew  the  lesson  that 
it  was  unwise  to  tilt  chairs  unless  they  were  clearly 
tiltable.  But  this  accident  had  caused  him  to  insist 
on  his  own  room,  which  he  called  his  snuggery,  being 
furnished  as  he  chose  and  not  as  anybody  else  chose, 
and  here  he  rejoiced  in  chairs  of  the  pattern  known 
as  Chesterfield,  a  solid  mahogany  table,  on  which 
stood  a  telephone,  and  a  broad  firm  mantel-shelf 
where  he  could  put  a  box  of  cigars  without  fear  of  its 
overbalancing.  On  this  point  also,  his  wife  had 
adopted  a  similar  attitude  and  her  own  sitting  room 
opening  out  of  the  white-furnished  bedroom  where  she 
was  afraid  to  touch  anything  for  fear  of  "soiling"  it,  was 
thoroughly  to  her  taste.  As  in  her  husband's  snuggery 
she  had  matters  arranged  for  her  own  comfort  and  not 
for  other  people's  admiration.  Percy  had  "done"  the 
room  for  her,  and  sometimes  when  she  came  up  here 
to  look  at  her  letters  before  going  to  bed,  and  drink  the 
glass  of  hot  water  which  was  so  excellent  a  digestive 
after  the  dinner  that  was  still  a  little  curious  to  her,  she 
wondered  whether  Percy  did  not  understand  house 
furnishing  better  than  the  great  French  firm,  the  name 
of  which  she  was  always  rather  shy  of  pronouncing. 
She  had  asked  him  to  choose  all  the  furniture  himself, 
remarking  only  that  she  was  a  little  rheumatic,  and 
found  it  difficult  to  get  out  of  very  low  chairs.  And  he 
had  succeeded  to  admiration,  not  only  had  he  con- 
sulted her  comfort,  but  he  had  divined  and  satisfied 
her  taste.  The  paper  of  the  walls  was  a  pattern  of 
ferns  with  iridescent  lilies  of  the  valley  neatly  disposed 


I2  THE    OSBORNES 

among  them,  so  that  it  was  almost  a  shame  to  hang 
pictures  thereon;  indeed  it  would  have  been  quite  a 
shame  had  not  those  pictures  been  so  well  selected. 
For  Mrs.  Osborne  cared  far  more  about  the  subject 
of  a  picture  than  the  manner  in  which  it  was  presented, 
and  all  the  subjects  were   admirably  chosen.     There 
was  a  beautiful  "view"  of  the  church  that  Edward  had 
built  at  Sheffield,  a  print  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington  in 
a  garter  and  of   Queen  Victoria  in  a  bonnet  and  a 
couple  of  large  oil-paintings,  one  of  the  Land's  End  and 
the  other  of    Koynance   Cove,   both   of   which   were 
intimately  associated  in  her  affectionate  heart  with  her 
honeymoon.     Edward  and  she  had  spent  a  month  in 
Cornwall,  staying  at  little  inns  and  walking  as  much 
as  possible  to  save  expense,  and  though  all  that  was 
thirty  years  ago,   she  never  entered   this  room  now 
without  remembering  how  they  had  sat  just  on  that 
very  bluff  above  the  emerald  sea,  and  read  the  "Idylls 
of  the  King"  together,  and  he  had  promised  her,  when 
they  were  rich  enough,  to  give  her  an  emerald  necklace 
to  remind  her  of  the  colour  of  the  sea.     It  is  true  that 
those  emeralds   (which  were   remarkably   fine)    were 
not  exactly  of  the  tint  that  either  nature  had  given  to 
the  sea,  or  the  very  vivid  artist  had  reproduced  in  the 
painting  that  hung  on  the  walls,  but  they  still  reminded 
both  her  and  Edward  of   those  enchanted  weeks  in 
Cornwall,  and  it  was  but  seldom,  when  she  wore  her 
emeralds,  that  he  did  not  say  "Mrs.  O.  has  got  the 
Land's  End  emeralds  on  to-night." 

Then,  more  often  than  not  would  follow  the  explana- 
tion of  this  somewhat  cryptic  remark,  and  the  whispered 


THEOSBORNES  13 

information  of  how  much  the  emeralds  had  cost.  Mrs. 
Osborne,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  had  overheard,  again  and 
again,  what  the  figure  was,  but  she  was  still  officially 
ignorant  of  it,  and  generally  closed  the  subject  by  saying, 
"Mr.  Osborne  won't  never  tell  me  what  he  paid  for 
them.  I  believe  he  got  them  cheap,  and  that's  why." 

But  she  secretly  rejoiced  to  know  that  this  was  not 
the  reason.  The  reason  was  just  the  opposite;  they 
had  been  so  enormously  expensive.  That  expense 
would  not  be  unreasonable  now,  but  at  the  time,  for 
she  had  worn  the  Land's  End  necklace  for  twenty  years, 
it  had  been  preposterous.  They  had  had  no  holiday 
one  year  in  consequence,  but  had  grilled  in  Sheffield 
throughout  August  and  September.  But  during  those 
months  she  had  worn  the  emeralds  every  evening,  and 
it  had  been  a  sort  of  renewal  of  the  honeymoon. 
Though  they  had  not  been  able  to  go  away  themselves, 
they  had  managed  to  send  Percy  and  Claude  to  the  sea- 
side, and  the  two  months  in  Sheffield,  when  every 
night  she  wore  the  emeralds  which  had  been  the  cause 
of  their  remaining  there,  was  still  one  of  Mrs.  Osborne's 
most  delightful  memories,  as  a  sort  of  renewed  honey- 
moon. Since  then  times  had  considerably  changed, 
and  though  to  many  the  change  from  simplicity  of  life 
and  not  uncomfortable  narrowness  of  means  to  the 
wider  horizons  which  the  rapid  accumulation  of  an 
enormous  fortune  brings  within  the  view,  implies  a  loss 
of  happiness  rather  than  an  extension  of  it,  neither 
Edward  nor  she  were  of  that  Arcadian  build.  They 
both  immensely  enjoyed  the  wider  horizon ;  the  humble 
establishment  with  parlour  maids  had  been  all  very 


I4  THEOSBORNES 

well,  but  how  much  more  enjoyable  was  the  brown- 
stone  house  on  the  outskirts  of  Sheffield  with  footmen 
and  a  carriage.  For  Mrs.  Osborne  did  not  find  it  in 
the  least  interfered  with  her  happiness  to  have  men  to 
manage,  or  "richer"  things  to  eat.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
she  liked  managing,  and  rejoiced  in  the  building  of  a 
new  wing  to  the  brown  stone  house,  in  the  acquisition  of 
motor  cars  and  in  the  drain  on  their  time  and  resources 
by  Edward  being  made  Mayor  of  Sheffield.  Neither 
of  them  ever  thought  that  they  had  been  happier  when 
their  means  were  more  straitened  and  their  establish- 
ment humbler.  Both  of  them,  in  spite  of  an  essential 
and  innate  simplicity  of  nature  rejoiced  in  these 
embellishments,  and  were  always  ready  to  enlarge  and 
embellish  and  rejoice.  They  had  always  made  the 
most  of  their  current  resources  —  though  in  a  merely 
financial  sense  they  had  always  saved  —  and  it  was 
as  great  a  pleasure  to  Mrs.  Osborne  to  see  her  table 
plentifully  loaded  with  the  most  expensive  food  that 
money  could  provide,  and  press  second  helpings  on  her 
guests,  as  it  had  been  to  have  a  solid  four  courses 
at  midday  dinner  on  Sunday  in  Sheffield  and  tell  her 
friends  that  Mr.  Osborne  liked  nothing  better  than  to 
have  a  good  dinner  on  Sunday,  and  see  a  pleasant  party 
to  share  it  with  him.  She  still  inquired  if  she  might 
not  "tempt"  her  neighbours  at  table  to  have  another 
quail,  just  as  she  haa  tried  to  persuade  them  to  have  a 
second  cut  of  roast  lamb,  when  in  season,  while  from 
the  other  end  of  the  table  she  would  hear  as  a  hospitable 
echo  her  husband's  voice  recommending  Veuve  Clicquot 
of  1884,  just  as  hi  the  old  days  he  had  recommended 


THEOSBORNES  15 

the  sound  whiskey  which  would  hurt  nobody,  not  if 
you  drank  it  all  afternoon. 

The  year  of  the  mayoralty  of  Sheffield  had  been 
succeeded  by  seven  years  fatter  than  even  Joseph 
had  dreamed  of.  Edward  was  as  sound  in  his  business 
as  he  was  in  the  whiskey  he  so  hospitably  pressed  on 
his  guests,  and  by  dint  of  always  supplying  goods  of 
the  best  possible  workmanship  and  material  at  prices 
that  gave  him  no  more  than  a  respectable  profit,  the 
profits  had  annually  increased  till  in  the  opinion  of 
those  who  did  not  adopt  so  unspeculative  a  quality 
of  goods,  they  had  almost  ceased  to  be  respectable,  and 
became  colossal  instead.  Then,  at  the  end  of  seven  fat 
years,  Edward  had  realized  that  he  was  sixty,  though 
he  neither  looked  nor  felt  more  than  an  adolescent 
fifty,  had  turned  the  hardware  business  into  a  com- 
pany, and  as  vendor  had  received  ordinary  shares  to 
an  extent  that  would  insure  him  an  income  no  less  than 
that  of  the  fat  years.  He  had  already  put  by  a  capital 
that  produced  some  ten  thousand  pounds  a  year,  and 
he  was  thus  not  disadvantageously  situated.  Percy, 
however,  still  held  the  Art  Department  in  his  own 
hands.  The  plant  and  profits  of  that  had  not  been 
offered  to  the  public,  but  had  been  presented  to  Percy 
by  his  father  on  the  occasion  of  his  marriage,  an  event 
now  six  years  old.  For  the  whole  idea  of  ornamental 
tin  ivy  and  the  host  of  collateral  ideas  that  emanated 
therefrom  had  been  Percy's  and  it  was  now  a  joke 
between  his  father  and  him  that  Mrs.  P.  would  soon 
have  an  emerald  necklace  that  would  take  the  shine 
out  of  the  Land's  End.  "Land's  End  will  be  Mrs.  P.'s 


16  THEOSBORNES 

beginning,"  said  his  father.  "And  the  Sea  is  Britannia's 
realm,"  he  added  by  a  happy  afterthought.  "Til 
call  her  Mrs.  C.  instead  of  Mrs.  P.  Hey,  Per?" 

Badinage  had  ensued.  She  was  called  Mrs.  C. 
instantly  and  there  were  numerous  conjectures  as  to 
who  C.  was.  Mr.  Osborne  said  that  it  was  curious 
that  C.  was  the  first  letter  of  Co-respondent;  but  that 
joke,  though  Edward  was  usually  very  successful  in 
such  facetiae,  was  not  very  well  received.  The  momen- 
tary Mrs.  C.  ate  her  grapes  with  a  studied  air,  and  Mrs. 
Osborne  from  the  other  end  of  the  table  —  this  was 
still  in  Sheffield  —  said,  "You  don't  think,  Eddie;  you 
let  your  tongue  run  away  with  you." 

On  reflection  Eddie  agreed  with  her,  and  there  was 
no  more  heard  about  Mrs.  C.  But  he  always  thought 
that  his  badinage  had  been  taken  a  little  too  seriously. 
"A  joke's  a  joke, "  he  said  to  himself  as  he  shaved  his 
chin  next  morning,  leaving  side-whiskers.  "But  if 
they  don't  like  one  joke,  we'll  try  another.  Lots  of 
jokes  still  left." 

So  without  sense  of  injury  or  of  being  misunderstood 
he  tried  plenty  of  others,  which  were  as  successful 
as  humour  should  have  any  expectation  of  being. 
Humour  comes  from  a  well  that  is  rarely  found,  but 
when  found  proves  always  to  be  inexhaustible.  The 
numerical  value,  therefore,  of  Edward's  jokes  had  not 
been  diminished  and  Percy  inherited  his  father's  sense 
of  fun. 

^  Still  in  Sheffield,  Mr.  Osborne  had,  after  the  forma- 
tion of  the  company,  seen  an  extraordinary  increase  in 
business,  with  the  result  that  his  income,  already 


THE    OSBORNES  17 

scarcely  respectable,  mounted  and  mounted.  Years 
ago  he  had  built  a  chapel  of  corrugated  iron  outside 
and  pitch-pine  inside  in  the  middle  of  that  district  of 
the  town  which  had  become  his  and  was  enstreeted 
with  the  houses  of  his  workmen,  and  now  he  turned 
the  corrugated  building  into  a  reading  room,  as  soon 
as  ever  the  tall  Gothic  church  with  which  he  had 
superseded  it  was  ready  for  use.  A  princess  had 
come  to  the  opening  of  it,  and  had  declared  the  dis- 
carded church  to  be  a  reading  room,  and  there  was 
really  nothing  more  to  do  in  Sheffield,  except  to  say 
that  he  did  not  wish  to  become  a  knight.  Mr.  Osborne 
had  no  opinion  of  knights:  knighthood  in  his  mind 
was  the  bottom  shelf  of  a  structure,  where,  if  he  took 
a  place,  it  might  easily  become  a  permanent  one.  But 
he  had  no  idea  of  accepting  a  bottom  place  on  the 
shelves.  With  his  natural  shrewdness  he  said  that 
he  had  done  nothing  to  deserve  it.  But  he  winked  in 
a  manner  that  anticipated  familiarity  toward  shelves 
that  were  higher.  He  had  not  done  with  the  question 
of  shelves  yet,  though  he  had  nothing  to  say  to  the 
lowest  one. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  because  he  had  retired 
from  active  connection  with  the  hardware  business, 
his  mind  slackened.  The  exact  contrary  was  the 
case.  There  was  no  longer  any  need  for  him  to 
exercise  that  shrewd  member  on  hardware,  and  it  only 
followed  that  the  thought  he  had  previously  given  to 
hardware  was  directed  into  other  channels.  He 
thought  things  over  very  carefully  as  was  his  habit, 
before  taking  any  step,  summed  up  his  work  in 


i8  THEOSBORNES 

Sheffield,  settled  that  a  knighthood  was  not  adequate  to 
reward  him  for  what  he  had  already  done,  but  con- 
cluded that  he  had  nothing  more  to  do  in  Sheffield, 
just  for  the  moment.  And  having  come  to  that  con- 
clusion he  had  a  long  talk  with  Mrs.  O.  in  her  boudoir, 
where  she  always  went  after  breakfast  to  see  cook  and 
write  her  letters.  But  that  morning  cook  waited  down- 
stairs hi  her  clean  apron  long  after  Mrs.  Osborne 
had  gone  to  her  boudoir,  expecting  every  moment  to 
hear  her  bell,  and  no  bell  sounded.  For  more  weighty 
matters  were  being  debated  than  the  question  of 
dinner,  and  at  first  when  Mr.  Osborne  broached  the 
subject  his  wife  felt  struck  of  a  heap. 

"Well,  Mrs.  O.,  it's  for  you  to  settle,"  he  said,  "and 
if  you're  satisfied  to  remain  in  Sheffield,  why  in  Shef- 
field we  remain,  old  lady,  and  that's  the  last  word  you 
shall  hear  from  me  on  the  subject.  But  there's  a  deal 
to  be  considered  and  I'll  just  put  the  points  before  you 
again.  There's  yourself  to  lead  off  with.  You  like 
seeing  your  friends  at  dinner  and  giving  them  of  the 
best  and  so  do  I.  Well,  for  all  I  can  learn  there's 
a  deal  more  of  that  going  on  in  London  where  you 
can  have  your  twenty  people  to  dinner  every  night  if 
you  have  a  mind,  and  a  hundred  to  dance  to  your  fiddles 
afterward.  And  I'm  much  mistaken,  should  we  agree 
to  leave  Sheffield  and  set  up  in  town,  if  Mrs.  O.'s 
parties  don't  make  some  handsome  paragraphs  in  the 
Morning  Post  before  long." 

"Lor',  to  think  of  that,"  said  Mrs.  Osborne 
reflectively.  She  did  not  generally  employ  that  inter- 
jection, which  she  thought  rather  common,  and  even 


THE    OSBORNES  19 

now,  though  she  was  so  absorbed,  she  corrected  herself 
and  said  "There,  to  think  of  that." 

"But  mind  you,  my  dear,"  continued  Mr.  Osborne, 
"if  we  go  to  town,  and  have  a  big  house  in  the  country, 
as  per  the  scheme  I've  been  putting  before  you,  we 
don't  do  it  to  take  our  ease,  and  just  sit  in  a  barouche 
and  drive  round  the  Park  to  fill  up  the  time  to  luncheon. 
I  shall  have  my  work  to  do,  and  it's  you  who  must  be 
helping  me  to  get  on,  as  you've  always  done,  God 
bless  you  Maria,  and  fine  and  busy  it  will  make  you. 
There's  a  county  council  in  London  as  well  as  in 
Sheffield,  and  there's  a  House  of  Parliament  in  London 
which  there  isn't  here.  No,  my  dear,  if  we  go  to  Lon- 
don it  won't  be  for  a  life  of  ease,  for  I  expect  work  suits 
us  both  better,  and  there's  plenty  of  work  left  in  us 
both  yet.  Give  us  ten  years  more  work,  and  then  if 
you  like  we'll  get  into  our  Bath  chairs,  and  comb  out 
the  fleece  of  the  poodle,  and  think  what  a  busy  couple 
we  are." 

Mr.  Osborne  got  up  and  shuffled  to  the  window  in 
his  carpet  slippers.  They  had  been  worked  and 
presented  to  him  by  his  wife  on  his  last  birthday  and 
this  had  been  a  great  surprise,  as  she  had  told  him 
throughout  that  they  were  destined  for  Percy.  At 
this  moment  they  suggested  something  to  him. 

"Look  at  me  already,  my  dear!"  he  said.  "What 
should  I  have  thought  ten  years  ago  if  I  had  seen 
myself  here  in  your  boudoir  at  eleven  of  the  morning 
in  carpet  slippers  instead  of  being  at  work  in  my  shirt 
sleeves  this  last  three  hours.  'Eddie,'  I  should  have 
said  to  myself,  'you're  getting  a  fat,  lazy  old  man  with 


20  THE    OSBORNES 

years  of  work  in  you  yet.'  And,  by  Gad,  Mrs.  O.,  1 
should  have  been  right.  Give  me  a  good  dinner,  but 
let  me  get  an  appetite  for  it,  though,  thank  God, 
my  appetite's  good  enough  yet.'  But  let  me  feel  I 
earn  it." 

Mrs.  Osborne  got  up  from  her  davenport  and  came 
and  stood  by  her  husband  in  the  window.  In  front 
of  her  stretched  the  broad  immaculate  gravel  walk 
bordered  by  a  long  riband  bed  of  lobelias,  calceolarias 
and  geraniums.  Beyond  that  was  the  weedless  tennis 
lawn,  with  its  brand  new  net,  where  one  of  the  very 
numerous  gardeners  was  even  now  marking  out  the 
court  with  the  machine  that  Mr.  Osborne  had  invented 
and  patented  the  year  before  he  retired  from  entire 
control  of  his  business,  and  which  sold  in  ever  increas- 
ing quantities.  Below,  the  ground  fell  rapidly  away 
and  not  half  a  mile  off  the  long  straggling  rows  of 
workmen's  houses  between  which  ran  cobbled  roads 
and  frequent  electric  trams,  stretched  unbroken  into 
the  town.  Of  late  years  it  had  grown  very  rapidly 
in  the  direction  of  this  brown  stone  house,  and  with 
its  growth  the  fogs  and  smoky  vapours  had  increased 
so  that  it  was  seldom,  as  on  this  morning,  that  they 
could  see  from  the  windows  the  tall  and  very  solid 
tower  of  the  Gothic  church  that  had  supplanted 
the  one  of  corrugated  iron.  He  looked  out  over  this 
with  his  wife's  hand  in  his  for  a  moment  in  silence. 

"I  don't  know  how  it  is  with  you,  my  dear,"  he 
said,  "but  every  now  and  then  a  feeling  comes  over 
me  which  I  can't  account  for  or  resist.  And  the 
feeling  that's  been  coming  over  me  this  last  month 


THEOSBORNES  21 

agone,  is  that  me  and  Sheffield's  done  all  the  work  we're 
going  to  do  together.  But  there  are  plenty  of  days 
of  work  for  us  both  yet,  but  not  together.  Look  at 
that  there  quarter,  my  dear,  right  from  where  the  New 
Lane  houses  begin  to  where' s  the  big  chimney  of  the 
works  behind  the  church.  I  made  that,  as  well  you 
know,  and  it's  paid  me  well  to  do  it,  and  it's  paid 
Sheffield  to  have  me  to  do  it.  Not  an  ounce  of  bad 
material,  to  my  knowledge,  has  gone  into  the  factory 
gates,  and  not  an  ounce  of  bad  workmanship  ha? 
come  out  of  them.  I've  paid  high  for  first-class 
materials,  and  I  seen  that  I  got  them.  I've  turned 
out  none  but  honest  goods  what'll  do  the  work 
I  guarantee  them  for,  and  last  you  ten  times  as 
long  as  inferior  stuff,  as  you  and  cook  know,  since 
there's  not  a  pot  or  a  pan  in  your  kitchen,  my  dear, 
but  what  came  from  the  shops.  And  I've  made  my 
fortune  over  it,  and  that's  over,  so  I  take  it,  and  what's 
the  sense  of  my  sitting  on  top  of  a  hill,  just  to  look  at  my 
calceolarias  and  get  an  appetite  for  dinner  by  running 
about  that  court  there?  But  if  you've  got  a  fancy  for 
staying  in  Sheffield,  as  I  say,  this  is  the  last  word  I  speak 
on  the  subject." 

Mrs.  Osborne  nodded  at  him  and  pressed  his  arm, 
as  he  poured  out  these  gratifying  recollections  in  his 
rather  hoarse  voice. 

"There's  more  on  your  mind  yet,  Eddie,  my  dear,"  she 
said.  "Do  you  think  I've  lived  with  you  these  years  and 
seen  you  off  your  victuals  by  day  and  heard  you  tossing 
and  turning  in  your  bed  at  night  without  getting  to  know 
when  you've  told  me  all,  or  when  you've  got  something 


22  THEOSBORNES 

further  unbeknown  to  me  yet?    It's  not  me  only  you're 

thinking  of." 

Mr.  Osborne  beamed  on  his  wife. 

"Well,  if  you  aren't  right  every  time,"  he  said. 
"You've  guessed  it  all  I  reckon.  Yes,  it's  Claude.  I 
doubt  whether  I  didn't  make  a  mistake  about  Claude  at 
the  beginning,  and  whether  we  shouldn't  have  done 
better  to  put  him  into  the  business  like  Percy,  and  let 
Alfred  leave  him  his  money  or  not  just  as  he  liked.  But 
there,  if  we  made  a  mistake,  it's  our  business  to  make 
the  best  we  can  of  it  now.  But  whenever  I  see  the  boy 
I  think  we  did  the  right  thing  by  him,  and  we've  got  to 
go  on  doing  the  right  thing.  And  if  a  young  fellow  has 
been  to  Eton  and  Cambridge,  and  is  going  to  be  as  rich 
a  man  and  richer  nor  his  father  was,  without  having  to 
do  a  stroke  of  work  for  it,  I  ask  you,  Mrs.  O.,  what's  he 
to  do  with  himself  in  Sheffield  ?  Of  course,  he  could  go 
to  London  and  work  at  the  law  or  go  into  the  Army  or 
adopt  any  other  of  the  ways  of  wasting  time  and  doing 
nothing,  without  having  it  cast  up  at  you,  but  think  of 
the  chance  he  gets,  if  you  and  I  settle  in  London  and 
have  a  country  house  as  well,  so  that  he  can  ask  his 
friends  down  for  a  bit  of  shooting  or  whatever' s  on,  and 
bring  them  home  to  dine,  and  stop  for  his  mother's  dance 
or  concert,  or  whatever  you  have  named  for  such  a  day." 

He  paused  a  moment. 

"He'll  be  home  for  good  now  in  a  month's  time,  and 
I  should  like  to  be  able  to  say  to  him,  '  Claude,  my  boy, 
there's  no  need  for  you  to  think  how  you'll  occupy  your- 
self in  Sheffield  for  your  vacation,  for  we'll  soon  be  moving 
on.  Mother  and  I'  — that's  what  I  shall  say  — you 


THE    OSBORNES  23 

understand  — '  have  come  to  an  agreement,  and  there'll 
be  a  house  for  you  in  Grosvenor  Square,  perhaps,  or  in 
Park  Lane  to  bring  your  friends  to,  and  a  shooting  box 
somewhere  else,  so  that  whether  it's  Lord  This  or  the 
Honourable  That,  you  can  bring  them  down  and  find  a 
welcome,  and  a  bird  or  two  to  shoot  at,  and  the  pick  of  the 
London  girls  for  you  to  dance  with.' " 

"Eh,  Edward,  you  talk  as  if  the  thing  was  done,"  said 
his  wife. 

"Well,  so  it  is,  if  you  and  I  make  up  our  minds  to  it. 
And  you  guessed  right;  it's  a  particular  feeling  I've 
always  had  about  Claude.  Eton  and  Cambridge  may 
have  made  a  change  in  him,  or  it  may  be  that  he  was 
something  different  all  along.  But  to  see  him  come 
into  a  room,  into  that  smoking  room  for  instance  at  the 
Club.  Why,  it's  as  if  the  whole  place  belonged  to  him, 
it  is,  if  only  he  cared  to  claim  it.  And  the  very  waiters 
know  the  difference:  and  I  warrant  you  there's  always 
an  evening  paper  ready  for  him,  whoever  has  to  go  with- 
out. But  in  London  he'll  find  friends,  yes,  and  a  girl  to 
marry  him,  I  wager  you,  whose  folk  came  over  with  the 
Conqueror.  Maria,  I  should  like  to  speak  of  my  son- 
in-law  the  Earl,  or  the  Countess  my  boy's  mother-in- 
law.  There's  a  deal  in  a  name  if  you  can  get  hold  of 
the  right  one." 

Mrs.  Osborne  gave  a  great  sigh,  and  looked  at  her 
rings,  and  as  she  sighed  the  row  of  pearls  that  hung 
over  her  ample  bosom  rose  and  fell.  There  was  a  great 
deal  in  what  Edward  had  said,  and  that  which  con- 
cerned Claude  appealed  to  her  most.  She  had  felt  it  all 
again  and  again,  and  again  and  again  she  had  wished, 


24  THEOSBORNES 

content  though  she  was  with  the  very  comfortable  circum- 
stances of  her  life,  that  they  had  some  other  house  in 
which  to  welcome  him  home  for  his  vacation.  She  felt 
he  was  her  own  son  at  heart,  but  his  manners  were  such! 
It  was  Claude  all  over  to  behave  as  if  the  whole  room 
belonged  to  him,  should  he  choose  to  claim  it.  She  was 
devoted  to  Percy,  but  Percy,  she  well  knew,  felt  as  she 
did  when  he  was  going  out  to  dinner,  and  thought  about 
what  he  should  say,  and  looked  to  see  if  his  hair  was 
tidy,  and  hoped  he  hadn't  left  his  handkerchief  behind. 
But  Claude  seemed  to  know  that  everything  was  all  right, 
with  him,  or  if  it  wasn't  he  didn't  care.  Once  on  a  solemn 
occasion,  when  a  Royal  visitor  was  in  Sheffield,  the  whole 
family  had  been  bidden  to  lunch  with  the  mayor,  and 
Claude  had  discovered  in  the  middle  of  lunch  that  he 
hadn't  got  a  pocket-handkerchief,  and  the  day  was  enough 

to   make   anybody  persp .    And   then   in   thought 

Mrs.  Osborne  checked  again,  and  said  to  herself  "action 
of  the  skin."  But  Claude,  though  hot,  had  been  as  cool 
as  a  cucumber.  He  just  stopped  a  waiter  who  was  going 
by  and  said,  "Please  send  out  to  the  nearest  shop  and 
get  me  a  handkerchief."  Mrs.  Osborne  would  never 
have  dared  to  do  that,  and  if  she  had,  she  felt  that  the 
handkerchief  wouldn't  have  come.  But  in  five  minutes 
Claude  had  his,  "and  never  paid  for  it  neither,"  thought 
Mr.  Osborne  to  himself  in  a  mixed  outburst  of  pride 
and  misgiving.  Claude  wanted  a  handkerchief  and  it 
came.  He  didn't  bother  about  it. 

But  the  whole  suggestion  of  giving  up  Sheffield  where 
she  was  so  friendly  and  pleasant  with  so  many  local 
magnates  and  their  wives,  and  launching  into  the  dim 


THEOSBORNES  25 

unplumbed  sea  of  London  was  bewildering  though 
exciting.  She  had  no  doubts  about  Edward;  wherever 
Edward  was  he  would  do  his  part ;  she  was  only  doubtful 
about  her  own.  And  these  doubts  were  not  of  durable 
quality,  while  the  reflections  about  Claude  were  durable  in 
texture.  Once  a  friend  of  Claude's  at  Cambridge  had 
come  to  stay  at  the  brown  stone  house,  and  it  had  all  been 
very  awkward.  He  was  an  honourable,  too,  and  his 
father  was  a  lord,  and  though  he  was  very  quiet  and  polite, 
Mrs.  Osborne  had  seen  that  something  was  wrong  from 
the  first.  The  most  carefully  planned  dinners  had  been 
offered  him,  and  Edward  had  brought  out  the  Chateau 
Yquem,  which  was  rarely  touched,  and  this  young  man 
had  eaten  and  drunk  as  if  "it  was  nothing  particular." 
Mrs.  Osborne  had  tried  to  console  herself  with  the  thought 
that  he  didn't  think  much  of  his  victuals,  whatever  they 
were,  but  it  was  not  that  he  refused  dishes.  He  just  ate 
them  all,  and  said  no  more  about  it.  And  he  had  been 
regaled  with  two  dinner  parties  during  the  three  days  he 
was  with  them,  to  which  all  sorts  of  Aldermen  and  their 
wives  and  daughters  had  been  bidden.  She  had  not 
forgotten  his  rank  either,  for  though  there  were  two 
knights  and  their  wives  present  at  one  of  these  dinners, 
and  at  the  other  two  knights  and  a  baronet,  he  had  taken 
her  in  on  both  occasions.  Nor  was  their  conversation 
wholly  satisfactory,  for  though  Mrs.  Osborne  had  the 
Morning  Post  brought  up  to  her  room  with  her  early  tea, 
while  the  young  man  was  there,  in  order  that  she  might 
be  up  to  date  with  the  movements  and  doings  of  the 
nobility,  she  had  extraordinarily  bad  luck,  since  the 
bankruptcy  case  that  was  going  on  was  concerned  with  the 


26  THEOSBORNES 

affairs  of  his  sister  and  her  husband,  and  the  memorial 
service  at  St.  James's  proved  to  be  coincident  with  the 
obsequies  of  his  great-uncle.  Mrs.  Osborne  felt  that 
these  things  would  not  happen  when  they  were  in  the 
midst  of  everything  in  town. 

So  the  momentous  decision  had  been  made  and  two 
strenuous  years  had  followed,  during  which  time  Mr. 
Osborne  had  settled  to  adopt  (as  became  a  man  of  prop- 
erty in  these  Socialistic  days)  the  Conservative  cause  in 
politics,  and  after  one  defeat  to  get  himself  returned  for 
one  of  the  divisions  of  Surrey.  During  that  time,  too, 
No.  92  Park  Lane  had  been  pulled  down  and  by  amalga- 
mation with  No.  93,  been  built  up  again  in  a  style  that 
enabled  Mrs.  O.  to  have  her  friends  to  dine,  with  a  bit  of 
a  dance  afterward  or  Caruso  to  sing,  without  it  being 
necessary  for  late  comers  to  huddle  together  on  the 
stairs  where  they  could  not  hear  a  note,  or  stand  in  the 
doorway  of  the  ball  room  without  being  able  to  get  in,  or 
to  dance  if  they  did.  And  though,  as  has  been  stated,  the 
years  had  been  strenuous  and  the  struggle  continuous, 
neither  Mrs.  Osborne  nor  her  husband  ever  felt  that 
it  was  a  losing  game  that  they  were  playing.  Apart  from 
this  one  defeat  in  the  Conservative  interest,  and  one  dis- 
mal attempt  at  a  dance  in  the  house  that  they  had  taken 
before  No.  92  was  ready,  to  which  eight  men  came  (all 
told  and  counting  Percy)  they  had  swiftly  and  steadily 
mounted.  For  true  to  the  principles  on  which  her  hus- 
band had  amassed  so  large  a  fortune,  all  that  Mrs.  Osborne 
offered  was  of  the  very  best,  or  at  any  rate  of  the  sort  which 
momentarily  most  attracted.  The  singer  who  was  most 
in  vogue  sang  at  her  concerts,  or  the  heels  that  were  most 


THEOSBORNES  27 

admired  danced  there,  and  beyond  doubt  the  extreme 
pleasure  that  the  excellent  woman  took  in  her  own  hospi- 
tality contributed  largely  to  its  success.  She  was  no 
careworn  anxious-eyed  hostess,  but  bubbled  with  good- 
humour,  was  genuinely  glad  to  see  the  world  fill  her  rooms, 
and  always  welcomed  the  suggestion  that  any  guest  should 
bring  a  friend,  whose  name  was  instantly  entered  by 
her  admirable  secretary  on  her  visiting  list. 

And  thus  she  rose  and  prospered,  till  on  the  date  at 
which  this  story  opens,  she  had  crowned  the  work  of  her 
season  by  giving  this  immense  fancy-dress  ball,  which, 
to  give  it  its  due,  had  whipped  up  again  to  full  activity 
the  rather  moribund  energies  of  the  season.  Somehow 
the  idea  had  taken  on  at  once;  there  had  been  no  fancy- 
dress  function  of  any  importance  that  season,  and  by 
one  of  those  whims  that  govern  the  flow  and  ebb  of 
the  social  world,  London  had  thrown  itself  with 
avidity  into  the  notion.  '  It  was  soon  clear  that  everyone 
would  be  there,  and  everyone  was,  and  at  last  in  her 
own  house  Mrs.  Osborne  heard  the  strains  of  the 
National  Anthem. 

It  had  been  of  no  particular  period;  the  point  was 
not  to  have  a  strict  and  classical  function  but  any  amount 
of  jewels  and  fine  dresses,  and  Queens  of  Sheba,  Cleopa- 
tras  and  Marie  Antoinettes  joined  hands  in  the  quadrille 
with  Napoleon,  Piers  Gaveston  and  Henry  VIII.  She 
herself  had  been  an  admirable  Mistress  Page,  her  husband 
a  veritable  merry  knight.  But  of  all  the  brilliant  figures 
in  that  motley  crowd  there  was  none  perhaps  more 
admired  than  the  slim  dark  Piers  Gaveston.  And  that 
was  Claude. 


CHAPTER  II. 

DORA  WEST  was  trimming  her  hat.  It  was  a  straw 
hat  that  had  cost  a  shilling  or  two  when  it  came  into 
her  deft  hands,  and  the  trimming  would  only  prove  to  have 
cost  a  shilling  or  two  when  it  became  attached  to  the  hat, 
and  leaving  the  deft  hands  was  put  onto  her  extremely 
pretty  head.  But  by  that  time  the  hat  would  certainly 
have  become  a  very  pretty  hat.  This  she  was  explaining 
with  great  volubility  to  her  friend. 

"You  are  rich,  darling  May,"  she  said,  "and  in  con- 
sequence your  attitude  toward  hats  is  a  little  opulent  and 
vulgar.  I  can  put  the  feathers  and  the  flags  and  the 
birds'  eggs  in  exactly  the  same  place  as  Biondinetti,  or 
whoever  it  is  who  sells  you  hats." 

"No,  not  exactly,"  said  Mary,  with  the  quietness  that 
real  conviction  brings.  She  was  quite  certain  about 
that  point,  and  so  did  not  care  to  shout  over  it.  It  is 
only  when  people  are  not  certain  about  what  they  say, 
that  they  drown  their  want  of  conviction  in  arguments. 
Conviction  always  swims. 

Dora  had  several  pins  in  her  mouth,  and  so  did  not 
reply  at  once.  In  itself  the  pin-reason  was  excellent, 
and  more  excellent  was  the  fact  that  she  did  not  wish 
to  reply,  knowing  the  quiet  truth  of  Mary's  conviction, 
especially  since  she  could  not  settle  the  exact  angle  at 
which  a  very  large  white  feather  should  be  put.  It 
pierced  the  hat,  once  inward  once  outward,  that  was 

28 


THEOSBORNES  29 

Biondinetti  all  over,  but  where  in  heaven's  name  ought 
it  to  start  from?  So  she  only  made  a  little  impatient 
noise  with  her  lips,  and  even  that  was  difficult,  since  there 
was  a  danger  of  causing  a  pin  to  be  sucked  into  her 
mouth.  But  she  made  it  successfully.  She  poised  the 
feather  a  moment,  focussing  its  appearance  against  the 
hat.  The  effect  produced  by  the  impatient  noise  was 
sufficient  to  ensure  her  against  any  immediate  reply. 
Then  suddenly  the  inspiration  came,  and  with  a  pair 
of  tiny  scissors  she  cut  a  strand  or  two  in  the  straw  and 
stuck  the  quill  feather  through  the  holes. 

"There,"  she  said,  "and  you  pay  Biondinetti  two 
guineas  for  doing  that.  I  can't,  and  I  wouldn't  if  I 
could.  Austell  wrote  to  me  last  week  and  said  the 
swans  were  moulting,  and  I  telegraphed  —  that  cost 
sixpence  and  a  little  thought,  instead  of  two  guineas  —  to 
tell  him  to  send  me  big  wing  feathers.  He's  a  dreadful 
ass;  we  all  know  that,  but  he  had  the  sense  to  see  I 
wanted  feathers,  and  to  catch  a  swan  and  pluck " 

"What  a  disgusting  butcher,"  said  May.  "I  don't 
mean  butcher,  I  mean  vivisectionist." 

"And  how  do  you  think  you  get  your  feathers,  darling?" 
asked  Dora. 

"I  don't  know;  I  never  ask.  The  hat  comes  from  the 
shop." 

"Then  don't  ask  now,  because  I  will  tell  you.  Your 
horrid  shop  has  birds  killed,  and  then  plucks  them.  It 
does;  you  can't  deny  it.  Whereas  with  me  the  swan 
was  just  moulting,  and  Austell  assisted  Nature,  which  we 
all  do.  He  caught  its  head  in  a  landing-net  and  it  tried 
to  peck,  he  says " 


3o  THEOSBORNES 

Dora  West  stopped  suddenly  in  the  middle  of  these 
surprising  remarks,  and  held  out  the  hat  at  arm's  length 
in  order  to  observe  the  effect  of  the  feather.  She  had  one 
of  those  enchanting  faces  that  are  overwhelmingly  pretty 
for  no  particular  reason.  You  could,  if  you  chose,  argue 
her  prettiness  away,  by  maintaining  with  justification 
that  no  single  feature  on  it  had  warrantable  claims. 
They  were  all  passable,  it  is  true,  but  it  was  not  clear  how 
it  came  about  that  the  sum  of  them  was  so  delicious. 
Her  eyes  were  gray,  and  had  nothing  striking  to  recom- 
mend them,  her  nose  turned  up  at  the  tip  far  too  markedly 
to  be  able  to  claim  beauty,  and  the  mouth  was  quite 
certainly  too  large.  Yet  even  allowing  for  the  charm 
of  her  extreme  youth  and  the  vigour  and  vividness  of  her 
vitality,  there  was  no  accounting  for  the  supreme  pretti- 
ness that  was  there.  So  the  sensible  thing  was  to  stop 
arguing  and  look  at  it  again,  and  more  sensible  yet,  to 
say  something  that  should  make  her  laugh.  For  her 
laugh  was  the  most  enchanting  thing  of  all;  then  every 
feature  laughed,  there  was  no  telling  where  it  began  or 
where  it  ended.  May  before  now  had  declared  that  from 
quite  a  distance  off,  when  Dora's  back  was  turned,  she 
had  in  a  ballroom  seen  she  was  amused  because  the  back 
of  her  neck  and  her  shoulders  were  laughing  so  much. 
"Oh,  Nature  wants  a  lot  of  assistance,"  she  went  on. 
"She  is  perfectly  hopeless  if  you  leave  her  to  herself. 
Look  at  the  flowers  even,  which  are  quite  the  nicest  thing 
she  does.  Roses,  for  instance;  all  she  could  think  of 
in  the  way  of  roses  was  the  ordinary  wild  dog  rose.  I 
don't  say  it  is  bad,  but  how  paltry,  if  you  have  had  simply 
millions  of  years  to  invent  roses  in.  Then  man  comes 


THEOSBORNES  31 

along,  who  is  the  only  really  unnatural  being,  and  in 
quite  a  few  years  invents  all  the  heavenly  roses  which 
we  see  now.  Of  course  Nature  did  it,  in  a  sense,  but  she 
did  it  with  his  assistance." 

"But  why  do  you  call  man  unnatural?"  asked  May. 

"Why?  Because  he  saw  at  once  how  stupid  Nature 
was,  and  had  to  invent  all  the  things  that  make  life  toler- 
able. He  lit  fires,  and  built  houses,  and  made  laws,  and 
motor-cars,  and  shops,  and  —  and  boats  and  button  hooks. 
Motor-cars,  too ;  all  that  Nature  could  think  of  in  the  way 
of  locomotion  was  horses." 

The  feathers  were  inserted  in  absolutely  the  right  place, 
and  Dora  breathed  a  heavy  sigh  of  satisfaction,  laid  the 
hat  down  on  the  end  of  the  sofa,  hovered  over  the  tea  table 
for  a  moment,  and  selected  an  enormous  bun. 

"And  Nature  gives  us  brains,"  she  continued,  with  her 
mouth  full,  "and  the  moment  we  begin  to  use  them,  as 
I  have  been  doing  over  that  hat,  which  is  Biondinetti, 
she  decrees  that  we  shall  be  so  hungry  that  we  have  to 
stop  and  eat  instead.  The  same  with  talking:  she  gives 
us  a  tongue  to  talk  with  and  after  quite  a  few  minutes, 
talking  makes  us  hungry  too,  and  we  have  to  use  our  tongue 
to  help  us  to  swallow.  Did  you  know  you  swallowed 
with  your  tongue,  darling  ?  I  never  did  till  yesterday.  I 
thought  I  swallowed  with  my  throat,  but  apparently  the 
tongue  helps.  That's  why  we  can't  talk  with  our  mouths 
full  as  I  am  doing." 

May  Thurston  looked  at  the  hat  on  the  end  of  the" 
sofa  for  a  while,  and  then  transferred  her  gaze  to 
her  friend. 

"I  don't  think  I  agree  with  you,"  she  said.     "At 


32  THEOSBORNES 

least  I  allow  that  many  people  don't  know  what  being 
natural  means,  but  I  think  all  the  nicest  people  are  natural. 
You,  for  instance,  and  me  and  Mrs.  Osborne  last  night 
at  her  dance.  Never  before  have  I  seen  a  hostess  really 
enjoying  herself  at  her  own  ball.  She  stood  at  the  top 
of  the  stairs  and  beamed,  she  danced  and  beamed  - 

"And  never  before  have  you  seen  a  person  like  Mrs. 
Osborne  dance,"  remarked  Dora. 

"  Well,  not  often.  Anyhow,  she  enjoyed  herself  tremen- 
dously and  was  perfectly  natural." 

Dora  shook  her  head. 

"It  won't  do,  darling,"  she  said.  "I  allow  that  Mrs. 
Osborne  beamed  all  the  time  and  enjoyed  herself  enor- 
mously. But  why?  Because  everybody  was  there. 
Was  she  ever  so  much  pleased  at  Sheffield,  do  you  suppose, 
or  wherever  it  was  they  came  from  ?  I  am  sure  she  was 
not.  But  last  night  she  was  pleased  because  every  duchess 
and  marchioness  who  counts  at  all  was  there,  as  well  as 
heaps  that  don't  count  at  all.  She's  a  snob:  probably 
the  finest  ever  seen,  and  by  what  process  of  reasoning 
you  arrive  at  the  fact  that  a  snob  is  natural  is  beyond  me. 
I  agree  that  heaps  of  nice  people  are  snobs,  but  snobbish- 
ness is  in  itself  the  most  artificial  quality  of  an  artificial 
age.  Snobs  are  the  crowning  and  passionate  protest 
against  Nature " 

"Oh  well,"  said  May  in  deprecation  of  this  rather 
lengthy  harangue,  "I  didn't  mean  to  rouse  you,  Dora." 

"I  daresay  not,  and  in  that  case  you  have  done  so 
without  meaning.  But  really,  when  you  say  that  Mrs. 
Osborne  is  natural  I  am  bound  to  protest.  You  might 
as  well  say  that  your  mother  is." 


THEOSBORNES  33 

"Oh  no,  I  mightn't,"  said  May  quite  calmly.  "It 
would  be  simply  silly  to  call  mother  natural.  She  only 
does  things  because  they  are  'the  thing.'  She  spends 
her  whole  life  in  doing  'the  thing.'  And  yet  I  don't 
know  —  oh,  Dora,  what  very  odd  people  women  are  when 
they  grow  up!  Shall  you  and  I  be  as  odd,  do  you  think? 
I  love  mother,  and  so  do  you,  and  we  both  of  us  love  yours, 
don't  we?  but  they  are  very,  very  odd  people." 

Dora  gave  a  little  shriek  of  laughter. 

"Oh  don't,"  she  said.  "I  want  to  talk  about  snobs 
a  little  more." 

"Well,  I'm  sure  you've  often  told  me  that  mother  was 
one,"  remarked  May. 

"Yes,  the  darling;  she  is,  isn't  she?  She  is  the  most 
delicious  sort  of  snob.  A  month  ago  she  wouldn't  know 
the  Osbcrnes,  and  merely  said,  'I  have  no  doubt  they 
are  very  honest  people,'  with  her  nose  at  the  same 
angle  toward  earth  as  is  the  Matterhorn;  while  a 
week  ago  she  was  clamouring  for  an  invitation  to 
the  dance  last  night.  In  the  interval  it  had  become 
'the  thing'  to  know  the  Osbornes.  My  mother  saw  it 
was  going  to  be  'the  thing'  to  know  them  long  ago,  and 
called  at  Park  Lane  almost  before  they  had  washed  the 
white  blobs  of  paint  off  the  windows,  or  hung  up  those 
shields  of  heraldic  glass  on  the  stairs " 

"Oh,  no,  is  there  heraldic  glass  on  the  stairs?" 
asked  May,  in  a  slightly  awe-struck  tone.  "I  never 
saw  it." 

Dora,  as  her  friend  often  declared,  really  did  not  always 
play  fair.  There  had  quite  distinctly  been  the  satirical 
note  in  her  own  allusion  to  the  heraldic  glass,  but  as  soon 


34  THEOSBORNES 

as  May  reflected  that  in  the  appreciative  reverence  of 
her  reply,  Dora  was  down  upon  her  at  once. 

"And  why  shouldn't  they  have  heraldic  glass  as  much 
as  your  people  or  mine?"  she  asked  smartly.  "They've 
got  exactly  as  many  grandfathers  and  grandmothers  as 
we  have,  and  there's  not  the  slightest  reason  to  doubt 
that  Mrs.  Osborne  was  a  Miss  Parkins,  and  Mr.  Parkins' s 
heir,  who,  I  expect,  was  far  more  respectable  than  my 
mother's  father,  who  drank  himself  to  death,  though 
mother  always  calls  it  cerebral  haemorrhage.  Oh,  May, 
we  are  all  snobs,  and  I'm  not  sure  the  worst  snobbishness 
of  all  isn't  shown  by  those  who  say  they  came  over  with 
William  the  Conqueror  or  were  descended  from  Edward 
the  Fourth.  Probably  the  Osbornes  didn't  come  over 
with  William  the  Conqueror  but  were  here  long  before, 
only  they  don't  happen  to  know  who  they  were." 

"I  know,  that  is  just  it,"  said  May,  calmly.  "They 
don't  know  who  they  were,  and  yet  they  put  up  their 
coats  of  arms." 

Dora  looked  at  her  friend  in  contempt. 

"I  suppose  you  think  you  have  scored  over  that,"  she 
said. 

"Not  in  the  least.  I  am  only  pointing  out  perfectly 
obvious  things." 

"  Then  why  do  it  ?  "  said  Dora.  "  What  I  am  pointing 
out  are  not  perfectly  obvious  things.  At  least  they  appear 
not  to  be  to  you.  The  whole  affair  is  a  game,  stars  and 
garters  and  ancestors,  and  coats  of  arms  is  all  a  game. 
Oh,  I  don't  say  that  it  isn't  great  fun.  But  it  is  absurd  to 
take  it  seriously.  What  can  it  matter  to  you  or  me 
whether  great-grandpapa  was  a  peer  or  a  bootblack? 


THEOSBORNES  35 

It  only  amuses  us  to  think  that  he  was  a  peer.  And  if  it 
amuses  Mrs.  Osborne  to  think  that  Mr.  Parkins  had  a 
coat  of  arms  at  all,  why  shouldn't  she  put  it  up  in  the  hall 
window?  And  since,  as  I  said,  she  was  the  only  child, 
of  course  she  quarters  with  the  Osborne  arms.  It's  one 
of  the  rules.  I  believe  you  are  jealous  of  them,  because 
they  are  richer  than  your  horrid  family." 

Nothing  ever  roused  May  except  a  practical  assault 
upon  her  personal  comfort,  and  Dora  seldom  attempted 
to  rouse  her.  It  was  invariably  hopeless  and  the  present 
attempt  only  added  another  to  the  list  of  her  failures. 

"I  think  that  is  partly  true,"  said  May.  "I  don't  see 
why  common  people  should  have  the  best  of  everything. 
They  only  have  to  invent  a  button  or  a  razor,  and  all  that 
life  offers  is  theirs.  I  think  it's  deplorable,  but  it  doesn't 
make  me  angry  any  more  than  a  wet  day  makes  me  angry, 
unless  I  am  absolutely  caught  in  the  rain  with  a  new  hat. 
As  to  coats  of  arms  and  things,  I  think  it  is  rather  pleasant 
to  know  that  one's  grandfather  was  a  gentleman." 

Dora  waved  her  arms  wildly. 

"But  he  probably  wasn't!"  she  screamed.  "Mine 
wasn't,  he  was  the  wicked  one,  you  know,  and  did  awful 
things.  Much  worse  than  Mrs.  Osborne's  probably 
ever  dreamed  of.  Mrs.  Osborne's  great-grandfather 
would  certainly  have  cut  mine,  if  he  had  had  the 
chance " 

"He  wouldn't  have  had  the  chance,"  remarked  May. 
"And  also  Mrs.  Osborne  herself  would  cut  nobody,  who 
would  —  would  lend  lustre  to  her  house.  Oh,  Dora, 
let's  stop.  It  isn't  any  good.  You  are  a  democrat,  and 
a  radical  and  a  socialist,  and  really  it  doesn't  matter. 


36  THE    OSBORNES 

Besides  I  haven't  seen  you  for— oh,  well,  nearly  twenty- 
four  hours.    What  has  happened  ?" 

Dora  got  up. 

"I  don't  think  I  can  stop,"  she  said.  " Because  I  want 
to  know  what  you  really  think  about  certain  things.  Two 
heads  are  better  than  one,  you  know,  even  when  mine  is 
one  of  them.  Oh,  by  the  way,  Austell  has  let  Grote  to 
the  Osbornes.  They  have  taken  it  for  seven  years  from 
the  end  of  July.  It  was  mother's  doing  I  think.  I  - 
oh,  May,  you  may  call  me  a  radical  and  a  socialist  and 
anything  else  you  choose,  but  I  can't  quite  see  Mrs. 
Osborne  there.  She'll  fill  it  with  plush.  I  know  she  will. 
After  all,  I  expect  mother  is  right.  I  suppose  it  is  better 
to  pay  some  of  your  debts,  and  have  other  people  putting 
plush  monkeys  into  your  house  than  go  on  as  Austell 
has  been  doing.  I  expect  I  should  be  just  the  same  if 
he  was  my  son  instead  of  my  brother.  It  doesn't  seem 
to  matter  much  what  one's  brother  does,  as  long  as  he 
doesn't  wear  his  hair  long,  or  cheat  at  cards.  But  I 
daresay  it's  different  if  he's  your  son." 

Dora  gave  a  great  sigh,  and  was  silent.  In  spite  of 
that  series  of  statements  which  had  led  May  Thurston, 
quite  reasonably,  to  call  her  a  radical  and  a  socialist, 
there  was  some  feeling  within  her,  rather  more  intimate, 
rather  more  herself,  that  made  her  dislike  the  idea  of 
the  Osbornes  living  in  Grote,  which  had  always  been  her 
home.  The  Austell  finances,  especially  for  the  past  two  or 
three  years,  had  been  precarious,  and  though  her  mother 
had  a  jointure  that  would  enable  her  and  Dora  to  live 
quite  comfortably  in  her  house  in  Eaton  Place,  and  at 
the  little  bungalow  at  Deal,  it  had  been  necessary  before 


THEOSBORNES  37 

now  to  let  the  house  in  Eaton  Place  during  the  months  of 
the  season,  and  live  at  Deal,  and  to  let  the  bungalow  at 
Deal  (it  was  of  the  more  spacious  sort)  during  August 
and  September,  and  encamp,  so  to  speak,  in  a  corner  of 
Grote.  For  Jim  Austell,  her  brother,  it  could  not  be 
denied,  was  not  a  person  who  could  possibly  be  described 
as  dependable.  His  mother  had  made  the  most  pro- 
longed attempt  to  describe  him  as  such,  but  without 
success,  and  she  had  at  length  seen  the  futility  of  clinging 
to  Grote,  a  huge  Jacobean  mansion  with  an  enormous 
park.  In  the  latter,  being  of  sandy  soil,  a  public  golf 
links  had  been  started,  which  brought  in  £192  a  year, 
while  neighbouring  farmers  grazed  their  beasts  on  other 
portions.  The  total  receipts,  however,  about  paid  for 
the  flower  beds  and  the  trimming  of  the  exquisite  bank 
of  rhododendrons  that  grew  round  the  lake,  and  after  a 
year  or  so  of  trial,  the  scheme  had  been  pronounced 
financially  unsound,  and  for  the  last  six  months  the  place 
had  been  in  search  of  a  tenant.  Austell  had  hoped  that 
his  well-known  skill  at  bridge  and  his  knowledge  of  horses 
might  save  him  from  the  extremity  of  letting  it.  In  this 
he  had  been  disappointed;  they  had  but  contributed 
to  the  speed  at  which  it  was  necessary  to  do  so. 

All  this,  which  was  part  of  the  habitual  environment 
of  Dora's  mind,  part  of  the  data  under  which  she  lived, 
passed  through  it  or  was  presented  to  it,  like  a  familiar 
picture,  in  the  space  of  the  sigh  that  concluded  her  last 
speech.  It  was  no  longer  any  use  thinking  about  these 
things ;  Grote  had  been  let  to  the  Osbornes,  the  bungalow 
at  Deal  had  also  been  let  for  August,  and  till  September 
she  and  her  mother  were  going  to  "live  in  their  boxes." 


38  THEOSBORNES 

After  all,  they  had  done  that,  as  everybody  else  had,  often 
before,  and  for  much  longer  periods  than  one  month, 
but  it  was  the  first  time  that  they  had  been  compelled  to 
live  in  their  boxes  with  no  house  (except  Eaton  Place  in 
August)  to  flee  unto.  And,  at  this  moment  the  change 
struck  Dora.  For  week  after  week  before  now,  she  had 
stayed  with  friends,  knowing  (though  not  thinking  of  it) 
that  all  the  time  there  was  home  behind  it  all.  True,  now 
that  Grote  had  been  let,  it  would  have  been  possible  to 
live  in  the  bungalow  at  Deal,  but  the  latter  had  been  let 
while  the  former  was  still  uncertain,  and  Dora  suddenly  felt 
a  sense  of  homelessness  that  was  not  quite  comfortable. 
In  two  weeks  from  now  they  went  to  the  Thurstons,  then 
there  were  three  more  visits,  then,  no  doubt,  if  they  chose, 
many  more  visits,  but  there  was  nothing  behind;  there 
was  no  home.  Meantime,  the  Osbornes  grabbed  homes 
wherever  they  chose,  they  built  a  palace  in  Park  Lane, 
they  took  Grote  from  her  own  impecunious  family,  and 
as  Mrs.  Osborne  had  told  her  mother  last  night,  Mr.  O. 
had  a  fancy  for  a  bit  of  stalking  for  self  and  friends  in  the 
autumn,  and  had  taken  a  little  box  up  in  Sutherland. 
She,  however,  was  going  to  settle  down  at  Grote  at  the 
end  of  the  season,  and  did  not  intend  to  go  North.  There 
had  been  badinage  over  this,  it  appeared,  between  her 
and  Mr.  O.;  and  he  threatened  her  with  an  action  for 
divorce  on  the  grounds  of  desertion.  And  Dora  felt 
much  less  socialistic  and  far  more  inclined  to  agree  with 
May  on  the  iniquity  of  common  people  having  all  they 
wanted  simply  because  they  invented  a  button.  If  only 
she  could  invent  a  button. 
Dora,  as  has  already  been  seen,  was  apt  to  be  slightly 


THEOSBORNES  39 

discursive.  She  had  one  of  those  effervescent  minds  to 
which  every  topic  as  it  comes  on  the  board  instantly  sug- 
gests another,  and  in  half  a  dozen  sentences  she  was  apt  to 
speak  of  half  a  dozen  totally  different  things,  each  in  turn 
being  swiftly  abandoned  for  some  fresh  and  more  absorbing 
topic  which  each  opened  up.  She  had  begun  a  moment 
before  with  telling  May  that  she  wanted  her  advice,  and 
before  that  was  asked  or  offered,  before  indeed,  the  subject 
on  which  it  was  desired  was  so  much  as  mentioned,  she 
had  darted  away  afresh,  poising,  dragon-fly  fashion,  in  the 
direction  of  Grote,  and  the  letting  of  it  to  the  Osbornes. 
The  Osbornes  indeed  had  been  the  connecting  link,  and 
now  she  went  straight  back  via  the  Osbornes  to  the  point 
from  which  she  had  started. 

"Yes,  I  want  your  advice  May,"  she  repeated,  "or  I 
think  I  do.  It's  quite  serious,  at  least  it's  beginning  to  be 
quite  serious,  and  there  are  so  many  dreadfully  funny 
things  connected  with  it.  Yes,  Mr.  Osborne  has  asked 
leave  to  call  upon  mother  this  afternoon  at  six,  and  it's 
half-past  five  now.  Oh,  dear,  oh,  dear!  I  suppose  he 
found  out  in  a  book  that  that  sort  of  thing  was  done  a 
hundred  years  ago,  and  he  wishes  to  be  correct.  The 
Osbornes  are  absolutely  correct  if  you  think  of 
it.  Every  one  went  in  to  supper  in  the  right  order 
last  night,  which  never  happens  at  any  other  house  I 
have  ever  been  to,  and  where  does  he  get  those  ex- 
traordinary good  looks  from?  Oh,  I  don't  mean  Mr. 
Osborne.  How  can  you  be  so  silly — but  him.  Yes,  I'm 
telling  it  all  very  clearly,  aren't  I,  so  I  hope  you  understand. 
Perhaps  Mrs.  Osborne  was  a  beauty  once,  you  can't  tell." 

That    May   perfectly   understood    this   extraordinary 


40  THEOSBORNES 

farrago  of  observations  said  less  for  her  powers  of  per- 
spicacity than  might  have  been  supposed,  for  Dora 
was  not  alluding  to  any  new  thing,  but  to  a  subject  that 
had  often  before  been  mentioned  between  them.  And 
Dora  went  on,  still  discursively  but  intelligibly. 

"It's  coming  to  the  crisis,  you  see,"  she  said.  "Mr. 
Osborne's  call  on  mother  is  of  a  formal  nature.  He  is 
going  to  ask  permission  for  Claude  to  pay  his  addresses 
to  me.  He  will  use  those  very  words,  unless  mother  says 
'yes'  before  he  gets  so  far.  And  then  I  shall  have  to 
make  up  my  mind.  At  least  I'm  not  sure  that  I  shall; 
I  believe  it's  made  up  already.  And  yet  I  can't  be  sure. 
May,  I  feel  just  like  a  silly  sentimental  girl  in  an  impossible 
jeuilleton.  He  thrills  me,  isn't  it  awful?  But  he  does. 
Thrills !  I  don't  believe  any  boy  was  ever  so  good-looking. 
And  then  suddenly  in  the  middle  of  my  thrill,  it  all  stops 
with  a  jerk,  just  because  he  says  that  somebody  is  a  very 
'  handsome  lady.'  Why  shouldn't  he  say  'handsome  lady'  ? 
He  said  he  thought  mother  was  such  a  handsome  lady, 
and  I  nearly  groaned  out  loud.  And  then  I  looked  at  him 
again  or  something,  and  I  didn't  care  what  he  said.  And 
he's  nice  too.  I  know  he's  nice,  and  he's  got  excellent 
manners,  and  always  gets  up  when  a  lady,  handsome  or 
not,  comes  into  the  room,  instead  of  lounging  in  his  chair 
as  Austell  does  and  all  other  young  men  nowadays  except 
a  few  like  Claude  who  aren't  exactly  our  sort.  And  he's 
kind  and  he's  good.  Am  I  in  love  with  him?  For 
heaven's  sake,  tell  me." 

Dora  paused  a  moment  and  then  took  a  cigarette  from 
a  box  that  stood  on  the  mantelpiece,  and  lit  it.  She  never 
smoked  cigarettes;  she  only  lit  them,  and  the  mere  fact 


THEOSBORNES  41 

that  she  lit  one  was  indicative  of  extreme  absorption  in 
something  else. 

"You're  engaged,  May,"  she  said,  "so  you  ought  to 
know.  Else  what  is  the  use  of  your  being  engaged.  What 
do  you  feel  when  that  angel  Harry  comes  into  the  room?" 

May  could  answer  that  quite  easily. 

"Oh,  I  feel  as  if  it  was  me  coming  into  the  room," 
she  said.  "I  feel  as  if  I  am  not  in  the  room,  since  you  put 
it  like  that,  unless  he  is." 

The  conversation  had  been  flippant  enough  up  till 
this  moment,  though,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  Dora,  being 
inconsequential  by  nature,  often  gave  the  note  of  flippancy, 
when  she  was  in  earnest.  Both  of  the  girls,  in  any  case, 
were  quite  serious  now.  And  out  of  the  depth  of  her 
twenty  years'  wisdom,  May  proceeded  to  draw  a  bucket 
full  for  Dora,  who  was  only  nineteen. 

"Oh,  I  expect  you  are  in  love,"  she  said.  "At  least 
I  expect  you  are  feeling  as  if  you  were.  I  understand 
perfectly  about  the  thrill,  though  it  sounds  so  dreadfully 
Family  Herald  when  it  is  said.  But  one  does  thrill.  I 
believe  that  thrill  is  a  pretty  good  guide.  I  don't  usually 
thrill,  in  fact  I  never  had  thrilled  till  I  saw  Harry.  But 
I  always  thrill  at  him.  I  suppose  all  girls  feel  the  same 
when  they  fall  in  love.  I  suppose  people  on  bank 
holidays  thrill  when  they  change  hats,  or  eat  winkles. 
We  are  all  common  then.  At  least  you  may  call  it 
common  if  you  choose.  I  don't  see  why  you  should. 
It's  IT." 

"You  haven't  told  me  about  me,"  remarked  Dora. 

May  Thurston  shifted  her  position  slightly.  It  was 
not  done  with  any  idea  of  manoeuvre.  She  was  the  least 


42  THEOSBORNES 

dramatic  of  girls,  and  she  only  shifted  because  she  felt  a 
little  uncomfortable.  It  was  new  to  her  also  to  take  the 
lead.  Dora  usually  strode  ahead. 

"I  can't  advise  you  about  things  of  that  sort,"  she  said. 
"I'm  old-fashioned,  you  see- 

"Oh,  are  you,  darling?"  murmured  Dora.  "Nobody 
would  have  guessed  it." 

"But  I  am  over  things  like  that,  old-fashioned  and 
romantic.  I  think  love  in  a  cottage  would  be  quite  ideal, 
not  because  a  cottage  is  ideal  —  I  would  much  sooner  not 
live  in  one  —  but  because  love  is.  And,  oh,  Dora,  I  can 
just  advise  you  not  to  marry  him  unless  you  are  in  love 
with  him.  I  daresay  heaps  of  girls  make  very  nice  sensi- 
ble marriages,  where  there's  lots  of  money,  and  where  they 
each  like  the  other,  but  you  do  miss  such  a  lot  by  not 
falling  in  love.  You  miss  —  you  miss  it  all." 

Dora  scrutinized  her  friend  for  a  moment,  her  head  a 
little  on  one  side,  with  something  of  the  manner  of  a 
bright-eyed  thrush  listening  for  the  movement  of  the  worm 
that  it  hopes  to  breakfast  on. 

"But  there's  something  in  your  mind,  which  you 
are  not  saying,  May,"  she  remarked.  "I  can  hear  it 
rustling." 

"Yes.  There  are  just  two  little  things  that  make  me 
wonder  whether  you  are  in  love  with  him.  The  first  is 
you  said  you  were  sure  he  was  good !  That  is  no  reason 
at  all.  You  don't  fall  in  love  with  a  person  because  he's 
good.  You  esteem  and  like  him  —  or  it's  possible  to 
conceive  doing  so  —  because  he's  good,  but  you  don't 
love  him  for  that  reason." 

Dora  gave  a  little  purr  of  laughter. 


THEOSBORNES  43 

"Oh,  May,  you  are  heavenly,"  she  said.  "But  surely 
it's  an  advantage  if  your  promesso  is  good." 

"  Oh,  certainly,  but  nobody  in  love  stops  to  think  about 
that." 

"I  see.  Well,  what  is  the  second  thing  that  makes 
you  wonder?" 

May  looked  at  her  with  her  large,  serious  blue  eyes. 

"What  you  said  about  being  brought  up  with  a  jerk 
in  the  middle  of  your  thrill,  when  he  spoke  of  a  handsome 
lady.  As  if  it  mattered !  Yet  somehow  it  does  to  you,  or 
it  would  not  bring  you  up  with  a  jerk!" 

"And  you  think  it  doesn't  matter?"  asked  Dora. 

"  Of  course  not  if  you  love  him,  and  if  you  don't,  in  the 
name  of  all  that  is  sensible,  don't  marry  him.  That 
sort  of  marriage  is  called  sensible,  I  know.  It  is  really 
the  wildest  and  most  awful  risk." 

Dora  stared. 

"How  do  you  know?"  she  asked. 

"Of  course  I  know,  simply  because  I'm  in  love  with 
Harry.  Fancy  being  tied  to  a  man  for  life  without  that! 
Gracious,  it's  nearly  six,  and  he  was  to  call  for  me  at 
home  at  six." 

"  Oh,  you  can  keep  him  waiting  ten  minutes,"  said  Dora. 
"We've  only  just  begun  to  talk  about  the  great  point." 

May  shook  her  head. 

"I  could  keep  him  waiting,"  she  said,  "but  I  couldn't 
keep  myself.  I  must  go.  Darling,  I  long  to  hear  more, 
only  you  see  I  can't  stop  now.  Come  and  see  me  to- 
morrow morning.  I  shall  be  in  till  lunch  time." 

Dora  shrugged  her  shoulders,  not  in  the  least  naturally 
but  of  design. 


44  THE    OSBORNES 

"I  think  it's  a  pity  to  fall  in  love  then,  if  it  makes  one 
so  selfish,"  she  remarked. 

"No  doubt  you  are  right,  darling.  Good-bye," 
said  May. 

It  was,  as  May  had  said,  close  on  six,  and  in  anticipa- 
tion of  Mr.  Osborne's  arrival,  Dora  removed  herself 
from  the  little  fore-and-aft  drawing  room  which  looked 
out  in  front  through  two  windows  on  to  Eaton  Place,  and 
at  the  back  through  one  on  to  the  little  square  yard 
behind  the  house,  and  went  upstairs  to  her  bedroom, 
taking  the  hat  with  one  swan  feather  fixed  in  it  and  the 
other  still  unplaced,  with  her.  But  even  the  hat,  though 
in  this  extraordinarily  interesting  condition  with  regard 
to  its  trimming,  failed  at  the  moment  to  make  good  any 
footing  in  her  mind.  It  was  not  that  hats  were  less 
interesting  than  before  (especially  to  the  maker  and 
wearer)  but  that  during  this  last  month  something  else 
had  grown  infinitely  more  interesting  than  anything  else 
had  ever  been;  the  standard  of  interest  possible  in  this 
world  which  Dora  found  so  full  of  enchanting  things, 
had  been  immeasurably  raised.  Life  hitherto  had  been 
brilliantly  full  of  surface  brightnesses,  but  it  seemed 
to  her  now  as  if  life,  the  sunlike  spirit  of  life,  which 
shone  with  so  continuous  a  lustre  on  her,  struck  the  surface 
of  herself  no  longer,  but  penetrated  down  into  depths 
that  she  had  not  yet  dreamed  of.  There,  in  those  depths, 
so  it  seemed  to  her,  she  sat  now,  while  on  the  surface,  so  to 
speak,  there  floated  all  the  pleasant  and  humorous  and 
friendly  things  of  life.  The  hat  she  held  in  her  hand 
floated  there,  dogs  swam  about  there  and  flowers  sparkled, 


THEOSBORNES  45 

May  Thurston  was  there  and  friends  innumerable.  But 
as  in  the  exquisite  picture  of  the  birth  of  Eve  by  Watts, 
a  big  photograph  of  which  hung  over  her  bed,  it  was  as 
if  all  these  were  but  a  skin,  a  rind  which  even  now  was 
peeling  off  her,  showing  beneath  the  form  and  the  wonder 
of  the  woman  herself. 

She  sat  in  the  window  seat,  and  the  hot  air  of  the  tired 
afternoon  streamed  slowly  and  gently  in,  just  lifting  and 
letting  lie  again  the  bright  brown  of  her  hair.  Outside 
the  hundred  noises  of  the  busy  town  mingled  and  melted 
together,  and  seemed  to  her  to  form,  even  as  the  blending 
of  all  colours  forms  the  apparently  colourless  white,  a 
general  hush  and  absence  of  noise.  Rousing  herself  for 
a  moment,  and  consciously  listening,  she  could  detect  and 
name  the  ingredients  of  it;  there  was  the  sharp  clip  of 
horses'  hoofs,  the  whirr  of  motors,  the  chiding  of  swifts, 
the  agitated  chirp  of  sparrows  over  some  doubtful  treasure 
of  the  roadway,  the  tapping  of  heels  on  the  hot  pavement, 
the  cool  whisper  of  cleansing  from  a  water  cart,  and  the 
noise  of  news  being  cried  round  the  corner.  But  all  these 
were  blended  together  and  formed  not  confused  noise  but 
quietness,  and  from  the  quietness  of  her  face,  and  the 
immobility  of  her  hands  which  were  usually  so  active,  you 
might  have  guessed  that  she  was  tired  or  bored,  and 
found  this  hour  pass  heavily.  But  a  second  glance  would 
have  erased  so  erroneous  an  impression:  there  was  a 
smouldering  brightness  in  her  eye,  and  ever  and  again  a 
little  trembling  at  the  corners  of  her  mouth  which  might 
develop  into  a  smile,  or,  equally  easily  almost,  be  the  pre- 
cursor of  flooded  eyes. 

For  the  last  month  now  she  had  had  moods  like  this, 


46  THEOSBORNES 

when  she  dived  down  from  the  froth  and  effervescence  of 
her  surface  mind  and  sat  below  in  deep  and  remote  waters. 
It  was  not  that  she  had  lost  the  power  of  living  on  the 
surface,  for  this  afternoon  with  her  friend  she  had  been 
quite  completely  there,  until  toward  the  end  of  their 
talk  she  had  felt  that  she  was  being  beckoned  down  again 
and  knew  that  when  May  left  her  she  would  sink  into 
these  depths  that  till  lately  she  had  not  known  existed. 
Yet  the  path  that  had  led  to  them  had  been  quite  natural; 
all  her  life  she  had  above  all  things  loved  beauty,  whether 
of  waves  or  birds  or  sunsets,  or  human  beings.  Thus  it 
was  without  any  sense  of  a  strange  or  unusual  thing 
happening  to  her  that  she  had  admired  frankly  and 
naturally  the  dark  merry  face  of  this  young  man.  He 
had  taken  her  into  dinner  once  or  twice;  he  had  danced 
with  her  a  half  dozen  times.  And  then,  suddenly  and 
quite  unexpectedly,  he  belonged  to  the  surface  of  things 
no  longer  as  far  as  she  was  concerned.  Something 
smote  at  her  heart,  and  the  flowers  and  birds  peeled  away 
like  rind  as  from  Eve  when  she  was  born,  and  the  woman 
shone  within. 

And  indeed,  there  was  little  in  all  this  to  wonder  at, 
for  in  spite  of  crabbed  and  cynical  proverbs  about  beauty 
being  only  skin-deep,  it  remains  and  will  remain  to  those 
who  have  eyes  themselves,  the  wand  of  the  enchanter. 
No  doubt  the  enchantment  can  be  made  without  the  wand, 
but  when  eyes  are  keen,  and  blood  is  young,  how  vastly 
more  easily  is  the  enchantment  effected  with  the  aid  of 
that  weapon.  And  Claude  to  her  thinking,  before  ever 
she  even  wondered  if  she  was  falling  in  love  with  him, 
was  certainly  not  without  the  wand.  He  was  dark,  a 


THEOSBORNES  47 

potent  colour  to  her  who  was  so  fair;  hair  nearly  black 
grew  low  and  crisp  on  the  forehead,  and  eyebrows  quite 
black  met  above  his  brown  eyes.  Then  came  the  lean, 
smooth  oval  of  his  face,  a  mouth  rather  full-lipped,  and  a 
squarish  chin.  Often  before  he  spoke,  especially  if  he 
had,  as  not  infrequently  happened,  some  rather  determined 
remark  to  make,  he  jerked  his  head  a  little  back  and  put 
out  his  chin.  It  was  a  gesture  of  extraordinary  decision, 
and  "oh,"  said  Dora  to  herself  now,  as  she  thought  of  it, 
"I  do  like  a  man  to  know  his  mind." 

The  same  signs  of  knowing  his  mind  were  visible,  too, 
in  his  movements.  He  never  strayed  about  a  room,  or 
leaned  against  anything.  If  he  purposed  to  stand  up,  up 
he  stood ;  if  he  wished  for  support  he  sat  down.  But  as 
far  as  Dora  had  seen,  he  seldom  wished  for  support ;  those 
rather  long  slim  limbs  and  boyish  figure  appeared  remark- 
ably capable  of  supporting  themselves.  He  moved  quickly 
and  with  a  certain  neatness  that  was  attractive ;  once  — 
these  tiny  details  were  important  in  making  up  her  impres- 
sion of  him  —  she  had  seen  him  strike  a  match  in  a  windy 
place  to  light  his  cigarette ;  one  quick  stroke  had  kindled  it 
and  his  thin  brown  fingers  made  a  cavern  for  it,  in  which 
it  burned  unwaveringly  as  in  a  room.  And  he  could 
dance,  really  dance,  not  slide  about  in  a  crowded  ballroom 
with  an  avoidance  of  collision  which  was  really  magical, 
and  without  —  doubtless  these  things  were  all  of  the 
surface,  but  they  caused  the  whole  image  to  sink  down 
with  her  into  those  depths  —  without  having  to  mop  his 
face  when  they  stopped,  which  in  general  was  not  before 
the  music  stopped. 

Suddenly,  from  the  combined  quietness  of  the  noises 


48  THEOSBORNES 

outside,  a  sound  detached  itself  and  made  itself  very  clea* 
to  her  ear.  It  was  a  motor  just  preparing  to  start 
somewhere  close  below  her  in  the  street,  and  Dora,  feeling- 
instinctively,  somehow,  that  this  was  significant  to  her, 
got  up  and  leaned  out  of  the  window.  Her  instinct  was 
correct  enough;  a  big,  short,  broad  man  with  an  extremely 
shiny  top-hat  was  just  stepping  into  the  big  Napier  car 
that  stood  at  her  mother's  door.  Even  as  she  looked  out 
the  chauffeur  nipped  into  his  place  again,  and  in  answer 
to  the  footman's  inquiry  she  heard  Mr.  Osborne  say 
"'Ome"  quite  distinctly.  Then  he  lifted  his  shiny  hat 
and  carefully  wiped  the  top  of  his  bald  head.  Upon  which 
Dora  had,  no  doubt  in  reaction  from  her  really  serious 
half  hour  of  thought,  a  slight  fit  of  the  giggles. 

But  the  giggles  soon  stopped;  they  were  but  of  the 
nature  of  coming  to  the  surface  to  breathe,  and  she  was 
already  beginning  to  sink  back  toward  the  depths  again, 
when  there  came  a  tap  at  her  door,  and  her  mother 
entered. 

Lady  Austell  was  very  tall,  and  one  felt  at  once  that 
there  was  not  the  slightest  doubt  that  she  was  not  a  count- 
ess; it  seemed  somehow  far  too  suitable  a  thing  to  have 
really  occurred.  But  in  the  endless  surprises  of  this  world, 
in  which  everything  unconjecturable  happens,  and  every- 
one is  what  he  should  not  be,  the  ideally  fit  thing  had 
occurred,  and  a  countess  she  was  hi  spite  of  the  obvious- 
ness of  the  fact  that  she  must  be.  That  she  was  dowager 
was  no  less  easy  a  guess,  for  though  eighteen  years  had 
elapsed  since  her  husband's  death,  there  was  something 
about  her  dress,  a  little  strip  of  crape  insertion  in  the 
violet  of  her  gown,  it  may  be,  or  the  absence  of  any  jewels 


THEOSBORNES  49 

except  an  amethyst  cross,  or  at  other  times  a  cap  very 
Dutch  and  becoming  with  a  ribbon  of  black  in  it  that 
sat  loosely  on  her  abundant  hair,  that  suggested,  though 
it  did  not  notify,  widowhood.  These  insignia,  it  must  be 
noted,  she  did  not  wear  simultaneously,  but  there  was 
never  a  day  on  which  one  at  least  of  them,  or  others  like 
them,  was  not  present.  No  doubt  also  her  manner  gave 
confirmation  to  the  impression  conveyed  by  her  dress, 
for  it  was  one  from  which  all  exuberance  had  departed, 
though  it  suggested  and  reminded  you  (like  a  clear  sunset) 
that  a  brilliant  day  had  preceded  it.  Her  voice  also  was 
rather  faint  and  regretful,  the  voice  of  a  widow  with  an 
unsatisfactory  son  and  an  unmarried  daughter.  But 
those  who  knew  her  best  had  in  their  minds  the  very 
distinct  knowledge  that  it  was  difficult  if  not  impossible 
to  silence  that  faint  voice,  or  make  it  say  anything  different 
to  what  it  had  already  said.  Lady  Austell,  when  her 
views  were  in  conflict  with  those  of  others,  never  said  very 
much,  but  she  never  changed  her  tune,  nor  indeed  ceased 
faintly  chanting  it,  until  the  opposition  had  been  borne 
down  by  her  quiet  persistence.  As  for  the  regretfulness 
of  which  her  gentle  accents  were  full,  it  may  have  been 
composed  of  grief  for  the  fact  that  others,  not  she,  would 
eventually  be  obliged  to  yield. 

It  will  be  seen,  therefore,  that  Theresa  Austell  was  an 
instance  the  more  of  the  undoubted  fact  that  people  as 
well  as  things  are  not  what  they  seem.  She  seemed, 
until  you  knew  her  quite  well,  to  live  uncomplainingly 
but  regretfully  among  the  memories  of  dead  and  happier 
years,  whereas,  when  your  acquaintance  with  her  ripened, 
you  would  find  that  she  lived  with  remarkable  keenness 


5o  THEOSBORNES 

in  the  present,  and  kept  a  wide  and  unwavering  eye  on 
a  live  and  happier  future.  She  appeared  to  be  soft, 
gentle  and  helpless;  in  reality  she  was  remarkably 
capable  of  taking  care  of  herself,  and  though  like  ivy  she 
appeared  to  cling  to  others  for  support,  her  nature  was 
in  truth  that  of  the  famous  ivy  that  grew  on  the  new  man- 
sion in  Park  Lane;  it  could  stand  upright  with  perfect 
ease,  and  was  of  metallic  hardness.  Adversity  —  for  she 
had  not  had  a  very  happy  life  —  instead  of  breaking  her, 
had  tempered  her  to  an  exceeding  toughness;  what  had 
been  at  the  most  soft  iron  was  now  reliable  steel. 

She  gave  a  faint  wan  smile  at  Dora  as  she  entered. 

"I  thought  you  would  be  here,  dear,"  she  said.  "Your 
Aunt  Adeline  has  telephoned  to  know  if  we  want  her 
motor.  We  can  have  it  till  dinner-time  and  it  will  then 
take  us  to  her  house.  I  knew  you  liked  a  drive,  so  I 
thanked  her  and  said  'yes.'" 

This  was  merely  another  way  of  putting  the  fact  that 
Lady  Austell  wanted  a  drive  and  also  wanted  to  talk  to 
Dora.  But  her  method  of  putting  it  sounded  better,  and 
was  very  likely  quite  true.  Dora  did  like  a  drive  and 
since  her  mother  knew  it,  that  might  possibly  have  been 
the  reason  why  she  accepted  Aunt  Adeline's  offer.  But 
Lady  Austell' s  next  reason  (though  she  had  already  given 
reason  sufficient)  was  not  so  probable.  "A  drive  will 
do  you  good,  dear,"  she  said  faintly.  "You  look  a  little 
fagged  out  and  pale." 

Dora  had  learned  not  to  dispute  points  with  her  mother. 
Though  in  general  she  was  so  full  of  discursive  volubility, 
she  was  always  rather  silent  with  Lady  Austell,  of  whom, 
in  some  way  that  she  scarcely  understood  herself,  she 


THEOSBORNES  51 

was  considerably  afraid.  But  that  again  was  typical  of 
the  effect  her  mother  produced  on  people;  those  who 
knew  her  but  slightly  thought  she  was  the  least  formidable 
of  women,  but  the  better  she  was  known  the  more  she  was 
feared.  Often  Dora  argued  to  herself  about  the  matter; 
she  knew  that  she  was  not  afraid  of  anything  tangible  her 
mother  could  do  to  her;  she  could  not  beat  her  or  starve 
her,  or  ill-treat  her,  and  it  must  have  been  her  mother's 
nature  of  which  she  was  afraid.  The  feeling  was  anal- 
ogous to  a  child's  fear  of  the  dark;  it  fears  not  what  it 
knows  of,  but  the  unknown  possibilities  that  may  lurk 
therein.  It  cannot  say  what  they  are ;  if  it  knew  it  would 
probably  cease  to  fear  them. 

Dora  got  up  at  once. 

"Yes,  I  should  like  a  drive,"  she  said. 

"Then  put  on  your  hat,  dear."  And  Lady  Austell's 
pale  melancholy  eyes  fell  on  the  half-trimmed  straw. 

"Another  hat,  Dora?"  she  asked.  "I  should  have 
thought  what  you  had  would  have  lasted  you  till  the  end 
of  the  season!" 

And  at  the  words  Dora's  pleasure  in  her  new  hat 
fell  as  dead  as  Sisera  at  Jael's  feet.  Nobody  could  kill 
pleasure  (though  quite  innocently)  with  so  unerring  an 
aim  as  Lady  Austell. 

"It  didn't  cost  twopence,"  said  Dora.  "Jim  sent  me 
up  the  feathers  from  Grote." 

Lady  Austell  looked  at  the  straw  with  an  experienced  eye. 

"It  is  very  cheap  for  less  than  twopence,"  she  remarked. 
"The  only  question  is  whether  it  was  necessary.  Then 
you  will  join  me  down  below,  dear?  I  have  a  note  to 
write,  and  we  may  as  well  leave  it  instead  of  posting  it." 


52  THEOSBORNES 

This  was  illustrative  of  the  cause  that  had  made  Dora 
say  that  when  women  grew  up  they  were  very  odd  people. 
Lady  Austell  would  unfalteringly  drive  through  miles 
of  odious  roads  to  deliver  a  note  rather  than  post  it,  but 
would  on  the  same  day  drive  to  Oxford  Street  (a  two- 
shilling  fare  in  a  hansom)  in  order  to  purchase  what  she 
would  have  paid  sixpence  more  for  round  the  corner.  She 
was  the  victim  of  the  habit  of  petty  economy,  hi  pursuit 
of  which  passion  —  one  of  the  most  fatal  —  she  would 
become  a  perfect  spendthrift,  casting  florins  and  half 
crowns  right  and  left  in  order  to  save  pennies.  She  took 
great  care  of  the  pence  and  the  half-crowns  presumably 
took  care  of  themselves,  for  at  any  rate  she  took  no  care 
of  them.  But  when  other  people's  expenditure  was 
concerned,  she  took  care  of  it  all. 

The  note  that  had  to  be  left  (which  concerned  cessation 
of  subscription  from  a  library  in  Leicester  Square)  caused 
them  to  traverse  the  length  of  Piccadilly,  and  to  retrace  it, 
before  they  could  leave  the  jostling  traffic  and  turn  into 
the  Park,  and  it  so  happened  that  in  this  traverse  of  the 
streets,  the  month  being  mid- July,  and  the  hour  the  late 
afternoon,  Lady  Austell  had  been  almost  incessantly 
occupied  (though  by  her  own  word,  she  disliked  all 
conventionality)  in  smiling  sadly  and  regretfully  as  was 
her  manner,  at  all  the  people  she  knew,  and  bowing 
(without  a  smile)  to  those  who  appeared  to  know  her. 
Somehow,  her  smile,  even  when  it  was  most  gracious  and 
welcoming,  always  suggested  to  the  person  on  whom  it 
was  bestowed  that  something  had  gone  wrong  with  his 
affairs,  and  Lady  Austell  knew  and  was  most  sympathetic, 
so  that  Mrs.  Osborne  (seated  in  a  landau  that  bobbed 


THEOSBORNES  53 

prodigiously,  owing  to  the  extreme  resilience  of  the  springs 
that  came  from  her  husband's  workshops)  receiving  one 
of  these  felt  certain  for  a  moment  that  Mr.  O.'s  mission 
that  afternoon  had  not  prospered  until  she  remembered 
that  she  had  seen  Lady  Austell  smile  like  that  before. 
Soon  after,  walking  gaily  eastward,  came  Austell,  whom 
she  had  thought  to  be  still  in  the  country,  and  on  whom 
she  bestowed  a  glance  of  pained  wonder,  closely  followed 
by  Claude,  looking  in  spite  of  the  heat  of  the  day  extremely 
cool  and  comfortable  in  a  straw-hatted  suit.  Dora  did 
not  see  him ;  she  was  at  the  moment  smiling  violently  at 
some  one  who  did  not  see  her.  Then  the  motor  checked 
for  a  moment  at  the  gates  of  the  Park,  slid  forward  again 
into  the  less  populous  ways,  and  Lady  Austell,  abandoning 
the  duties  of  recognition,  did  her  duty  by  her  daughter. 
As  usual  she  began  a  little  way  off  the  point  so  that  she 
could  get  well  into  her  stride,  so  to  speak,  before  you  saw 
that  she  was  going  anywhere  in  particular.  This  was  a 
settled  policy  with  her;  it  insured,  in  racing  parlance,  a 
flying  start  instead  of  a  start  from  rest.  During  the 
drive  down  Piccadilly  she  had  been  arranging  her  thoughts 
with  her  usual  precision;  she  knew  not  only  what  she 
was  going  to  say,  but  how  she  was  going  to  say  it. 

She  gave  a  little  sigh. 

"What  sermons  there  are  not  only  in  stones,"  she  said, 
"but  in  streets.  And,  do  you  know,  dear,  when  one 
drives  down  Piccadilly  like  that  and  sees  all  sorts  and 
conditions  of  men  and  women  jostling  each  other,  what 
strikes  me  is  not  how  different  people  are,  but  how  alike 
they  are.  All  the  differences  (she  was  getting  into  her 
stride  now)  which  we  think  of  as  so  great  are  really  so 


54  THEOSBORNES 

infinitesimal.  Real  differences,  the  things  that  matter, 
do  not  lie  on  the  surface  at  all.  I  think  our  tendency  is 
to  make  far  too  much  out  of  mere  superficialities  and  to 
neglect  or  discount  those  traits  and  qualities  which  con- 
stitute the  essential  differences  between  one  man  and 
another.  Don't  you  think  so,  dear?" 

The  ingenious  Latin  language  has  certain  particles 
used  in  asking  questions,  one  of  which,  the  grammarian 
tells  us,  is  used  if  a  negative  reply  is  expected,  another  if 
the  reply  is  expected  to  be  affirmative.  Lady  Austell, 
speaking  in  the  less  rich  language  of  our  day,  could  not 
make  use  of  these,  but  there  was  something  in  her  intona- 
tion quite  as  effective  as  "  nonne."  Dora,  without  question, 
found  herself  saying  "yes." 

"I  am  so  glad  you  agree  with  me,  dear,"  went  on  her 
mother,  "and  I  am  sure  you  will  agree  with  me  also  in 
the  fact  that,  this  being  so,  we  should  try  to  judge  people, 
or  rather  to  appreciate  them,  by  the  true  and  inner 
standard,  not  by  the  more  obvious  but  less  essential 
characteristics  that  we  see  on  the  surface." 

Lady  Austell's  voice  sank  a  little. 

"If  one  may  say  so  without  irreverence,"  she  said, 
"how  God  must  laugh  at  our  divisions  of  classes.  We 
must  look  like  children  arranging  books  by  the  colour  of 
their  covers  instead  of  by  their  contents.  We  class  all 
sorts  of  noble  and  ignoble  people  together  and  call  them 
gentlemen,  neglecting  the  only  true  classification 
altogether." 

It  was  evident  now  to  Dora  that  her  mother  had  got 
an  excellent  start,  and  she  could  see  what  she  had  started 
for.  There  was  no  need  for  reply,  and  Lady  Austell 


THEOSBORNES  55 

having  favoured  a  passing  friend  with  a  smile  that  was 
positively  wintry  in  its  sadness,  proceeded. 

"Such  a  good  instance  of  what  I  am  saying  occurred 
to-day,  dear,"  she  said.  "Mr.  Osborne  called  on  me  at 
six,  as  I  think  I  told  you  he  was  going  to  do,  and  for  the 
first  time  perhaps  I  fully  saw  what  true  delicacy  and  feeling 
he  has,  and  how  immensely  these  outweigh  any  of  those 
things  which  we  hastily  might  call  faults  of  manner  or 
breeding.  It  is  the  same  with  her,  kind  excellent  woman 
that  she  is.  What  a  priceless  thing  to  inherit  all  that 
kindness  and  sweetness  of  nature." 

Lady  Austell  was  flying  along  now;  the  race,  so  to 
speak,  was  clearly  a  sprint.  Dora  merely  waited  for  her 
to  breast  the  tape.  She  proceeded  to  do  so. 

"He  came  on  a  subject  that  very  closely  concerns  you, 
dear,"  she  said,  "and  like  a  true  gentleman  he  asked  my 
permission  before  allowing  any  step  to  be  taken.  Can 
you  guess,  dear?" 

Dora,  as  has  been  said,  stood  considerably  in  awe  of 
her  mother,  but  occasionally  a  discourse  of  this  kind, 
which  she  felt  to  be  entirely  insincere,  roused  in  her  an 
impulse  of  the  liveliest  impatience,  which  gave  sharpness 
to  her  tongue. 

"Oh,  dear,  yes,"  she  said.  "The  truly  delicate  Mr. 
Osborne  asked  if  Mr.  Claude  might  pay  his  addresses 
to  me.  I  expect  he  used  just  those  words.  I  hope  you 
allowed  him  to,  mother." 

Lady  Austell' s  manner  was  always  admirable.  She 
appeared  not  to  notice  the  sharpness  of  the  speech  at  all. 
She  laid  her  neatly  gloved  hand  on  Dora's. 

"Ah,  my  dearest,"  she  said. 


56  THEOSBORNES 

She  looked  at  her  with  her  sad  blue  eyes,  eyes  that 
always  looked  tender  and  patient,  even  when  she  was 
disputing  a  fare  with  a  cabman.  "I  am  sure  you  will  be 
very  happy  dear,"  she  said  after  a  pause.  "He  is  the 
most  excellent  young  man,  everyone  speaks  well  of  him. 
And,  my  dear,  how  good-looking.  A  perfect  —  I  forget 
the  name." 

Dora  had  a  momentary  tendency  to  giggle  at  the  anti- 
climax of  this.  But  she  checked  it,  and  again  her  impa- 
tience rose  to  the  surface. 

"Adonis?"  she  suggested.  "But  are  not  good  looks 
one  of  those  superficial  things  which  we  rate  too  high  ?" 

Lady  Austell  smiled. 

"Ah,  you  mischievous  child,"  she  said.  "You  make 
fun  of  all  I  say.  I  will  send  a  note  to  Mr.  Osborne 
to-night,  for  I  told  him  I  should  have  to  speak  to  you  first. 
You  will  make  him  very  happy,  Dora,  and  you  will  make 
somebody  else  happier.  Shall  we  turn  ?  " 


CHAPTER 

THE  garden  front  of  Grote  faced  southeast,  and  thus, 
though  all  day  the  broad  paved  walk  in  front  of  it 
had  been  grilled  by  the  burning  of  the  August  sun,  the 
shadow  of  the  house  itself  had  spread  'over  it  like  an 
incoming  tide  of  dark  clear  water  before  tea  time,  and  at 
this  moment  three  footmen  were  engaged  in  laying  the 
table  for  that  meal,  while  the  fourth,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
was  talking  to  the  stillroom  maid  under  pretence  of 
"  seeing  to  "  the  urn.  They  were  all  in  the  famous  Osborne 
livery,  which  was  rather  gorgeous  and  of  the  waspish 
scheme  of  colour.  There  were,  it  may  be  remarked, 
only  four  of  them,  because  Mr.  Osborne  was  still  in  Lon- 
don, roughing  it,  so  his  wife  was  afraid,  with  a  kitchen- 
maid  for  cook,  and  only  two  footmen  besides  his  own 
man,  for  Parliamentary  business  had  kept  him  there  for 
a  few  days  after  Mrs.  Osborne  had  left  to  get  things  in 
order  at  Grote.  But  he  was  expected  down  this  after- 
noon for  a  couple  of  nights  before  he  went  North,  and  the 
six  footmen  would  shine  together  like  evening  stars.  "Com- 
pany" also,  though  not  in  large  numbers,  were  also  arriving 
that  evening,  among  whom  were  Lady  Austell,  her  son, 
and  Dora.  The  latter  was  now  formally  and  publicly 
engaged  to  Claude. 

The  house  was  three-storied,  built  in  the  Jacobean 
style  of  brick  and  stone  with  small-paned  windows,  and 
the  brick  had  mellowed  to  that  russet  red  which  is  as 

57 


58  THEOSBORNES 

indescribable  as  it  is  inimitable.  A  door  opened  from 
the  long  gallery  inside,  which  was  panelled  and  hung  with 
portraits  —  inalienable,  luckily,  or  Austell  would  have 
got  rid  of  them  long  ago  —  onto  this  broad-paved  walk 
that  ran  from  end  to  end  of  the  house.  On  the  other 
side  of  it  was  the  famous  yew  hedge  with  square  doors  cut 
in  it,  through  which  were  seen  glimpses  of  the  flower 
garden  and  long  riband  bed  below,  and  the  top  of  this 
hedge  grew  the  grotesque  shapes  of  birds.  A  flight  of 
stone  steps  led  down  into  the  formal  flower  garden  below, 
which  was  bordered  on  the  far  side  by  the  long  riband 
bed.  Below  that  again  two  big  herbaceous  borders 
stretched  away  toward  the  lake,  on  the  far  side  of  which 
there  rose  from  the  edge  of  the  water  the  great  rhododen- 
dron thickets.  To  right  and  left  lay  the  park,  full  of  noble 
timber,  which  climbed  up  to  the  top  of  the  hill  opposite. 
Across  this  ran  the  road  from  the  station,  which  skirted 
the  lake  on  its  eastern  side,  and  passing  by  the  flower 
garden  came  up  to  what  Mrs.  Osborne  called  "the  car- 
riage sweep"  on  the  other  side  of  the  house,  from  which 
two  wings  projected,  so  that  the  carriage  sweep  was  really 
the  interior  of  a  three-sided  quadrangle. 

The  warning  hoot  of  an  approaching  motor  caused 
one  of  the  footmen  to  disappear  into  the  house  with  some 
alacrity,  and  a  few  minutes  afterward  Mr.  Osborne 
emerged  from  the  door  into  the  gallery.  He  still  wore 
London  clothes,  dark  gray  trousers  and  a  black  frock 
coat  and  waistcoat,  for  he  had  driven  straight  from 
the  House  of  Commons  to  Victoria,  but  he  had  picked 
up  a  Panama  hat  in  the  hall,  and  had  substituted  it 
for  his  silk  hat. 


THEOSBORNES  59 

"And  tell  your  missus  I've  come,"  he  observed  to  one 
of  the  wasps. 

He  sat  down  in  a  creaking  basket-chair  for  a  few 
moments,  "to  rest  and  cool,"  as  he  expressed  it  to  himself, 
and  looked  about  him  with  extreme  satisfaction.  His 
big  high-coloured  face  was  capable  of  expressing  an 
immense  amount  of  contentment,  and  though  from  time 
to  time  he  carried  a  large  coloured  handkerchief  to  his 
face,  and  mopped  his  streaming  forehead  with  a  whistled 
"Whew!"  at  the  heat,  so  superficial  a  cause  of  discomfort 
could  not  disturb  his  intense  satisfaction  with  life.  Things 
had  prospered  amazingly  with  him  and  his:  he  was 
thoroughly  contented  with  the  doings  of  destiny. 

He  was  still  "resting  and  cooling"  when  Mrs.  Osborne 
came  bustling  out  of  the  house,  also  very  hot,  and  kissed 
her  husband  loudly  first  on  one  cheek  and  then  on  the 
other. 

"Well,  and  that's  right,  my  dear,"  she  said,  "and  it's 
good  to  see  you.  But  you  are  hot,  Eddie,  and  is  it  wise 
for  you  to  sit  out  o'  doors  in  the  shadow  without  a  wrap  ? 
You  were  always  prone  to  take  a  chill." 

"I  should  be  prone  to  take  an  apoplexy  if  I  put  any- 
thing else  on,  Mrs.  O.,"  remarked  he.  "But  my!  it's  a 
relief  to  get  down  into  the  country  again.  Not  but  what 
things  haven't  gone  very  well  this  last  week  for  me  in  the 
House.  Commission  on  Housing  of  Employees !  I  had  a 
good  bit  to  tell  them  about  that,  and  I  warrant  you  they 
listened.  Lor',  my  dear,  they  like  a  plain  man  as'll  talk 
common  sense  to  them,  and  tell  'em  what  he's  seen  and 
what  he  knows,  instead  of  argufying  about  procedure. 
I  knew  my  figures,  my  dear,  and  my  cubic  feet  per  room, 


60  THE    OSBORNES 

and  my  statistics  about  the  health  of  my  workmen  and 
their  death-rate.  I've  been  a  common  man,  myself,  my 
dear,  and  I  told  them  so,  and  told  them  what  things  was 
when  I  was  a  lad." 

Mrs.  Osborne  was  slightly  aghast. 

"Oh!  Eddie,  I  doubt  that'll  tell  against  you,"  she  said. 

"Not  a  bit  of  it,  old  lady.  Everyone  knew  it  to  begin 
with,  else  I  don't  say  I  should  have  told  them.  And 
equally  they  know  that  they  come  and  dance  at  No.  92 
when  Mrs.  O.  invites  them.  Glad  they  are  to  come,  too, 
and  my  dinner  table  is  good  enough  for  anybody  to  put 
his  legs  under.  But  all  that's  over  for  the  present,  and  I 
didn't  come  away  for  my  holiday,  which  I've  deserved,  to 
talk  more  politics;  I  came  away  to  enjoy  myself,  and 
have  a  breath  of  country  air.  Eh!  it's  a  pretty  little  box 
this.  I  wish  I  could  have  bought  it.  I  should  have 
liked  to  leave  a  country  seat  for  Per  and  Mrs.  after  you 
and  me  was  dead  and  buried." 

This  turn  in  the  conversation  was  not  quite  to  Mrs. 
Osborne's  taste. 

"Don't  talk  so  light  about  dying,  Mr.  Osborne,"  she 
said,  "because  you  give  me  the  creeps  and  the  shivers  for 
all  it's  so  hot.  There's  a  host  of  things  too  I  want  to  talk 
to  you  about  before  the  company  comes,  without  thinking 
of  buryings.  There's  the  two  pictures  of  you  and  me 
arrived,  and  it  would  be  a  good  thing  if  you'd  cast  your 
eye  over  the  walls,  and  see  where  you'd  like  them  hung, 
and  we'd  get  them  up  at  once.  They're  a  fine  pair,  they 
are,  and  the  frames  too,  remarkably  handsome." 

"Well,  you  want  a  handsome  frame  for  a  handsome  bit 
of  painting,"  said  her  husband,  "and  finer  works  I've 


THEOSBORNES  61 

seldom  seen.  They  was  cheap  at  the  price.  Give  me  a 
cap  of  tea,  Mrs.  O.,  and  we'll  go  and  have  a  squint  at 
'em.  What  else,  my  dear?" 

Mrs.  Osborne  poured  him  out  a  cup  of  tea  as  she  knew 
he  liked  it,  extremely  strong.  She  put  in  the  cream  first 
and  stirred  it  up  before  handing  to  him. 

"Your  brother  Alfred  came  yesterday,"  she  said,  "and 
you  must  be  careful  how  you  behave  to  him  Eddie.  He's 
got  a  touch  of  the  lumbago,  and  it  makes  him  worried." 

"  Poor  old  Alf — cross  as  two  sticks,  I  shouldn't  wonder," 
said  Mr.  Osborne,  sipping  his  tea  loudly.  "Never  mind, 
there's  Claude  to  look  after  him,  and  Claude  manages 
him  as  never  was.  He's  wrapped  up  in  that  lad,  Maria, 
my  dear,  and  I'm  sure  I  don't  wonder.  Where  is  the  boy  ? 
And  my  lady  Dora  will  be  here  this  evening.  Lord,  Mrs. 
O.,  my  tongue  can't  say  'Dora'  yet:  it  keeps  saying  'my 
lady.'  I  seem  as  if  I  can't  get  used  to  it.  And  what 
other  of  the  lords  and  ladies  have  you  got  coming?" 

"Well,  there's  Lady  Austell  and  the  Earl,  and  there's 
Lady  Thurs  —  Lady  May  Thurston  and  Mr.  Franklin, 
to  whom  she's  engaged " 

"Why,  we're  a  houseful  of  lovers,"  said  Mr.  Osborne, 
beaming  delightedly. 

"That  we  are.  Then  there's  Alderman  Price  and  lady, 
just  run  down  from  Sheffield,  and  Sir  Thomas  Ewart  and 
lady " 

"Remind  me  to  get  out  the  '40  port,"  said  Mr. 
Osborne.  "Sir  Thomas  likes  a  glass  of  that." 

"He  likes  a  dozen  glasses  of  that,"  remarked  Mrs. 
Osborne,  "but  pray-a-don't  sit  for  ever  over  your  wine 
at  table,  Mr.  O.,  for  there's  the —  the —  I  never  can 


62  THEOSBORNES 

remember  the  name  of  that  quartette,  but  they're  going 

to  give  us  a  bit  of  music  after  - 

"Lashing  out,  lashing  out,"  said  her  husband,  "you'll 
make  a  pauper  of  me  yet,  Mrs.  O." 

"Never  you  fear,  but  Dora  loves  music,  and  nothing 
would  content  Claude  but  that  I  must  get  the  quartette 
down;  and  don't  you  look  at  the  bill,  Mr.  O.,  because  it's 
a  scandal  to  pay  that  for  a  bit  of  music.  And  then  there's 
Percy  and  Catherine,  and  your  brother." 

"Just  a  family  party,"  said  Osborne,  "that's  what  I 
like.  Family  party  and  an  old  friend  or  two  like  Sir 
Thomas  and  lady.  Times  change,  don't  they,  Mrs.  O.? 
There  was  a  time  when  you  and  me  felt  so  flustered  at 
being  bid  to  dinner  with  Sir  T.  that  we  were  all  of  a  trem- 
ble. Not  much  trembling  now,  eh?  Ah,  Maria,  for 
what  we  have  received  the  Lord  make  us  truly  thankful!" 

Mrs.  Osborne  did  not  at  once  follow  this. 

"And  since  when  have  you  said  your  grace  after  your 
tea,  Eddie?"  she  asked. 

"Oh,  it  wasn't  for  my  tea,"  said  he,  "I  was  just  thinking 
of  everything,  teas  and  breakfasts  and  luncheons  and 
dinners  and  work  and  play  and  enjoyment  alike.  I'm 
thankful,  I  am  thankful  for  it  all." 

Then  Mrs.  Osborne  understood  and  held  out  her  plump 
hand  with  its  large  knuckles  and  immense  jewelled  rings 
to  her  husband. 

"Eddie,  my  love,"  she  said,  "and  Lor',  here  comes 
Alfred.  Don't  go  kissing  my  hand  before  him.  He'd 
think  it  so  silly." 

"Silly  or  not,  Mrs.  O.,  here  goes,"  said  her  husband, 
and  imprinted  a  resounding  caress  on  it. 


wizened  little  figure.  Alfred,  for  all  the  heat  of  the  day, 
was  dressed  in  black  broadcloth,  wore  a  species  of 
buckled  goloshes  over  his  shoes  and  had  a  plaid  rug  over 
his  shoulders.  From  above  the  garish  colours  of  this 
rose  a  very  small  head,  which  would  have  been  seen  to  be 
bald  had  not  its  owner  worn  over  it  a  cap  of  Harris 
tweed,  the  peak  of  which  almost  came  over  his  eye. 
Below  that  appeared  a  thin  little  aquiline  nose,  a  mouth 
so  tight  and  thin-lipped  that  it  looked  as  if  it  was  not 
meant  to  open,  and  cheeks  so  hollow  that  they  looked  as 
if  they  were  being  sucked  in  by  voluntary  contraction. 
His  walk  was  peculiar  as  his  dress:  he  moved  one  foot 
a  little  forward  and  then  put  the,  other  level  with  it.  The 
same  process  repeated  led  to  an  extraordinarily  deliberate 
progression. 

Alfred  was  Mr.  Osborne's  elder  brother,  older  than 
him  by  some  ten  years.  He  had  entered  a  broker's 
office  as  clerk  at  the  age  of  fifteen,  and  in  the  intervening 
years  had,  by  means  of  careful  and  studied  speculation, 
amassed  a  fortune,  that  had  made  Mr.  Osborne  on  a 
former  occasion  remark  that  Claude  would  be  a  richer 
man  than  his  father  without  ever  having  done  a  stroke 
of  work  for  it.  For  Alfred  (unmarried  as  yet)  had  made 
Claude  his  heir,  a  benefaction  in  return  for  which  he 
"took  it  out"  of  Claude's  father  and  mother.  By  one 
of  those  strange  fantasies  of  Nature  which  must  supply 
her  with  so  great  a  fund  of  amusement,  he  united  to  an 
unrivalled  habit  of  being  right  with  regard  to  the  future 
movements  of  the  stock  market,  an  equally  unrivalled  eye 
for  the  merits  of  pictures,  and  had  for  years  bought  very 


64  THEOSBORNES 

cheaply  such  works  as  dealers  and  connoisseurs  would 
run  up  and  wrangle  for  at  Christie's  a  few  years  later. 
Here  the  inimitable  humour  of  the  construction  of  his 
nature  came  in,  for  well  as  he  loved  a  picture,  he  loved 
a  financial  transaction  a  little  more  dearly,  and  sometimes 
he  had  collected  works  of  an  artist  of  no  particular  merit, 
in  the  consciousness  that  when  dealers  knew  that  he  was 
buying  them,  they  would  begin  to  put  the  price  up.  Then 
he  would  gently  unload,  and  leave  them  with  unmarketable 
wares  on  their  hands.  He  delighted  in  dealers,  because 
they  ministered  to  his  recondite  sense  of  fun;  they  did 
not  delight  in  him,  because  they  never  knew  whether  he 
was  collecting  because  he  saw  merit  in  an  artist,  or 
because  his  design  was  to  make  them  think  that  such 
merit  existed.  One  or  two  had  tried  to  make  friends 
with  him,  and  asked  him  to  dinner.  He  ate  their  dinners 
with  a  great  appreciation,  and  scored  off  them  worst  of 
all.  By  some  further  strange  freak  of  fancy,  Nature  had 
made  it  easy  for  him  to  acquire  all  that  which  his  brother 
and  sister-in-law  could  not  acquire  at  all,  for  brother 
Alfred,  in  spite  of  his  ridiculous  clothes  had  the  manner, 
the  voice,  and  the  ways  of  an  eccentric  and  high-lineaged 
duke,  cynical  if  you  will,  and  of  amazing  ill-temper,  a 
fancy  which  Mrs.  Osborne  delicately  alluded  to  as  being 
worried.  He  also  gave  the  impression  of  infernal  wicked- 
ness, a  quality  which  he  was  quite  lacking  in,  except  as 
regards  his  ill-tempers.  It  was  an  undoubted  fact  that 
he  invariably  got  the  better  of  other  competitors  in 
speculating  and  picture  dealing  and  such  perfectly  legiti- 
mate pursuits,  which  they  might  be  inclined  to  attribute 
to  diabolical  alliances. 


THEOSBORNES  65 

He  crept  toward  the  tea  table,  looked  at  his  brother's 
hand,  which  was  held  out  in  salutation,  as  if  it  was  an 
insect,  rejected  it,  and  sat  down  pulling  his  shawl  more 
closely  about  his  shoulders. 

"Fresh  from  your  triumphs  in  the  House,  my  dear 
Edward!"  he  said.  "You  positively  reek  of  prosperity. 
You  seem  to  be  hot." 

"Well,  I'm  what  I  seem  then,"  said  Mr.  Osborne  with 
great  good  nature.  He  could  not  possibly  be  other  than 
polite  to  brother  Alfred,  who  was  to  make  Claude  his 
heir,  even  if  he  had  been  tempted  to  do  so.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  he  was  not  so  tempted.  "Rum  old  Alf "  was  his 
only  comment  on  his  brother,  when  he  had  been  more 
than  usually  annoying. 

"I  gather  that  the  aristocracy  assembles  before  dinner," 
went  on  Alfred.  "Maria,  my  dear,  after  giving  me  tea 
for  forty  years  at  frequent  intervals,  it  is  strange  that  you 
do  not  remember  that  I  take  milk  and  not  cream.  Another 
cup,  please." 

"Well,  and  how's  the  lumbago,  Alf?"  asked  his 
brother.  "Plumbago  I  call  it:  weighs  as  heavy  as  lead 
round  the  loins.  Not  but  what  I've  only  once  had  a 
touch  of  it  myself." 

"Very  humorous  indeed,"  said  Alfred.  There  was 
certainly  no  doubt  that  brother  Alfred  was  a  good  deal 
worried,  and  Mr.  Osborne  made  the  mental  note  that  his 
lumbago  must  be  very  bad  indeed  to  make  him  like  this. 
Acid  he  always  was,  but  not  always  vitriolic.  But  luckily 
both  Mr.  Osborne  and  his  wife  were  proof  against  either 
acid  or  vitriol.  They  only  felt  sorry  that  brother  Alf  was 
so  worried. 


66  THEOSBORNES 

"Well,  well,  take  your  mind  off  it,  Alf,"  he  said. 
"We've  got  a  lot  of  fair  dames  coming  down  to  cheer 
you  up.  Lord,  Maria,  what  a  rip  brother  Alf  was  when 
he  was  a  young  one.  Opera  every  night  and  bouquets 
to  the  ladies  on  the  stage  - 

"Libel,"  remarked  Alfred. 

Libel  it  was,  but  Mr.  Osborne  had  intended  it  for  a 
pleasant  sort  of  libel.  As  the  libel  and  not  the  pleasant- 
ness struck  Alfred,  he  abandoned  the  topic. 

"Bought  any  pictures  lately,  Alf?"  he  said. 

"No,  but  there  are  two  I  should  like  to  have  sold. 
You  and  Maria;  never  saw  such  daubs.  What  did  you 
pay  for  them?  Twenty-five  pounds  apiece?" 

Mrs.  Osborne  laughed,  quite  good  humouredly. 

"Why,  if  he's  not  trying  to  buy  them  cheap  off  us," 
she  said,  "and  sell  them  expensive.  Twenty-five  pounds 
apiece!  as  if  you  didn't  know  that  the  frames  came  to 
more.  You  and  your  joking,  Alfred!  Take  a  cucumber 
sandwich,  which  I  know  you  like,  though  how  you  digest 
such  cold  vegetables  at  tea  passes  me.  Why,  I  am 
reminded  of  a  cucumber  sandwich  for  hours  after." 

"Where  are  you  going  to  hang  them?"  asked  brother 
Alfred. 

"And  if  we  weren't  just  going  indoors  when  we've 
finished  our  tea  to  look!"  said  Mrs.  Osborne  cordially. 
"Do  come  with  us,  Alfred,  and  give  your  advice." 

"I  should  recommend  the  coal  cellar,"  said  Alfred. 
"They  want  toning." 

"Why,  and  he's  at  his  joke  again!"  said  Mrs.  Osborne, 
with  placid  admiration. 

There  is  probably  nothing  more  aggravating  to  a  man 


THEOSBORNES  67 

in  a  thoroughly  bad  temper  than  to  fail  in  communicating 
one  single  atom  of  it  to  others,  but  to  have  your  most 
galling  attacks  received  with  perfect  good  humour. 
Such  was  the  case  with  poor  Alfred  now;  he  could  no 
more  expunge  the  satisfaction  from  Eddie's  streaming 
countenance,  or  strike  the  smile  from  his  sister-in-law's 
powdered  face,  than  he  could  make  a  wax  doll  cease 
smiling,  except  by  smashing  its  features  altogether.  He 
tried  a  few  further  shafts  slightly  more  poisoned. 

"It's  odd  to  me,  Maria,"  he  said,  "that  you  don't  see 
how  Sabincourt,  or  whatever  the  dauber's  name  is " 

"Yes,  Mr.  Sabincourt,  quite  correct,"  said  Mrs. 
Osborne. 

"How  he  has  simply  been  making  caricatures  of  you 
and  my  poor  brother,  making  you  sit  with  your  rings  and 
bracelets  and  necklaces  and  tiaras,  just  to  show  them  off. 
And  you,  too,  Edward,  there  you  sit  at  your  table  with  a 
ledger  and  a  cash  box  and  a  telephone,  just  for  all  the 
world  as  if  you  were  saying,  'This  is  what  honest  hard- 
ware has  done  for  me ! " 

Mrs.  Osborne  was  slightly  nettled  by  this  attack  on  her 
husband,  but  still  she  did  not  show  it. 

"And  I'm  sure  Mr.  Sabincourt's  done  the  telephone 
beautiful,"  she  said.  "Why,  when  I  stand  and  look  at 
the  picture,  I  declare  I  think  I  hear  the  bell  ringing. 
And  as  for  my  necklace  and  tiaras,  Alf,  my  dear,  why  it 
was  Eddie  who  bade  me  put  them  on.  No,  we've  got 
no  quarrel  with  Mr.  Sabincourt,  I  do  assure  you." 

Alfred  gave  her  one  glance  of  concentrated  malevolence, 
and  gave  it  up.  Whether  he  would  have  tried  it  again 
after  a  short  period  for  reflection  is  uncertain,  but  at  this 


68  THE    OSBORNES 

moment  Claude  came  out  of  the  house.  "Hullo,  father!" 
he  said.  "I  thought  I  heard  the  motors.  But  I  was 
changing." 

"  Glad  to  see  you,  my  boy.    Been  having  a  ride  ?  " 

"Yes,  on  the  new  mare  Uncle  Alf  gave  me.  She's  a 
ripper,  Uncle  Alf.  I'm  ever  so  much  obliged  to  you. 
And  how's  the  lumbago?" 

Alfred's  face  had  changed  altogether  when  Claude 
appeared,  and  for  the  look  of  peevish  malignancy  in  his 
eyes  there  was  substituted  one  of  almost  eager  affection. 
And  certainly,  as  Mr.  Osborne  had  said,  there  was  little 
wonder,  for  Claude's  appearance  might  have  sweetened 
the  most  misanthropic  heart.  He  was  dressed  quite 
simply  and  suitably  in  white  flannels  and  white  lawn 
tennis  shoes,  and  the  contrast  between  him  and  his  father 
in  his  thick,  heavy  London  clothes  was  quite  amazing. 
His  brown  clean-shaven  face  was  still  a  little  flushed  by 
his  ride,  and  his  hair  was  even  now  just  drying  back  into 
its  crisp  curls  after  his  bath.  He  did  not  bother  his 
mother  to  pour  him  out  tea,  and  instead  made  a  bowl  of 
it  for  himself  in  an  unused  slop-basin,  moving  the  tea 
things  with  his  long-fingered  brown  hands  with  a  quick 
deftness  that  was  delightful  to  watch. 

"Four  lumps  of  sugar,  Claude?"  asked  his  father. 
"You'll  be  getting  stout,  my  boy,  and  then  what'll  your 
young  lady  say  to  you?" 

Alfred  turned  a  glance  of  renewed  malignancy  on  to 
his  brother  as  Claude  laughed. 

"She'll  say  I'm  taking  after  my  father,"  he  remarked. 

Alfred  gave  a  little  thin  squeak  of  amusement.  He 
had  entirely  failed  to  annoy  his  brother,  but  he  hoped 


THEOSBORNES  69 

that  Claude  would  have  better  luck.  But  again  he  was 
doomed  to  disappointment;  Mr.  Osborne's  watch  chain 
only  stirred  and  shook,  as  it  did  when  he  laughed  internally. 

Claude  looked  about  for  a  teaspoon,  took  his  mother's, 
and  stirring  his  slop-basin  of  tea,  which  was  half  milk, 
had  a  long  drink  at  it. 

"Father,  I  thought  I'd  drive  the  Napier  over  to  meet 
Lady  Austell  and  Dora,"  he  said,  "if  you  don't  mind." 

"  Why,  there's  the  two  landaus  going,  and  the  brougham, 
and  the  bus  for  the  servants, "  said  Mrs.  Osborne.  "What 
for  do  you  want  the  car?" 

Claude  flushed  a  little. 

"Oh,  I  only  thought  I  should  like  to  drive  it,"  he  said. 
"It's  a  smart  turnout,  too,  and  Dora  likes  motors." 

Mr.  Osborne's  watch  chain  again  responded  to  ventral 
agitations. 

"Blest  if  he  doesn't  want  to  give  his  girl  a  drive  in 
his  dad's  best  car,  to  show  off  the  car  and  his  driving," 
he  said  with  some  jocosity,  which  drew  on  him  brother 
Alfred's  malignancy  again. 

"It's  a  good  thing  you  haven't  got  to  do  the  driving, 
Edward,"  he  observed.  "Why  shouldn't  the  boy  have 
the  car  out?  I'll  pay  for  the  petrol." 

The  suggestion  conveyed  here  was  not  quite  a  random 
libel.  Alfred,  with  his  inconvenient  habit  of  observation, 
had  seen  that  the  cost  of  petrol  was  a  thing  that  worried 
his  brother  and  promised  to  be  a  pet  economy,  like  the 
habit  of  untying  parcels  to  save  string,  or  lighting  as  many 
cigarettes  as  possible  at  the  same  match,  or  the  tendency 
shown  by  Lady  Austell  to  traverse  miles  of  dusty  streets 
in  order  to  leave  a  note  instead  of  posting  it.  And  Mr. 


7o  THE    OSBORNES 

Osborne  got  up  a  little  more  hastily  than  he  would  other- 
wise have  done  if  this  remark  had  not  been  made. 

"Oh,  take  the  car,  take  the  car,  Claude,"  he  said. 
"Very  glad  you  should,  my  boy.  Now,  Mrs.  O.,  you 
and  I  will  go  in  and  see  where  we'll  hang  our  likenesses." 

Mr.  Alfred  waited  till  they  had  gone,  and  then  drew 
his  plaid  a  little  closer  round  his  shoulders  with  another 
squeak  of  laughter. 

"I  thought  that  would  get  the  car  for  you,  Claude," 
he  said;  "that  vexed  your  father." 

Claude  finished  his  tea. 

"  I  know  it  did,  Uncle  Alfred,"  he  said.  "  Why  did  you 
say  it?" 

"Why,  to  get  you  the  car.  That's  what  I'm  here  for, 
to  learn  what  you  want  and  see  you  get  it.  There's  some 
use  in  me  yet,  my  lad.  Usually  I  can't  make  your  father 
annoyed  with  me,  but  I  touched  him  up  that  time." 

Claude  could  not  help  smiling  at  his  uncle's  intense 
satisfaction,  as  he  sat  there  with  shoulders  hunched  up, 
like  a  little  malevolent  ape,  still  grinning  over  the  touch-up 
he  had  so  dexterously  delivered.  He  himself  had  got  up 
after  finishing  his  slop-basin  of  tea  and  was  balanced  on 
the  arm  of  his  chair,  one  slim  leg  crossed  over  the  other, 
and  his  hands  clasping  his  knees.  His  smile  caused 
those  great  dark  eyes  nearly  to  close  with  the  soft  wrinkling 
up  of  the  flesh  at  their  outer  corners,  but  closing  them  it 
opened  his  lips  and  showed  the  even  white  teeth  between 
them.  Then,  with  that  gesture  which  was  frequent  with 
him,  he  tossed  back  his  head  and  broke  into  a  laugh. 

"Well,  it's  too  bad  of  you,"  he  said,  "but  thanks  for 
getting  me  the  car.  It's  a  handsome  bit  of  work;  they 


THEOSBORNES  71 

told  me  at  Napier's  there  wasn't  such  another  on  the  road 
anywhere.  And  what  if  I  do  want  to  run  Dora  up  in  style  ? 
It's  natural,  isn't  it?" 

Somehow  when  Claude  was  with  his  father  and  mother 
he  appeared  to  be  a  perfectly  well-bred  boy.  But  in 
spite  of  his  extraordinary  good  looks  and  the  perfect  ease 
of  his  manner,  the  moment  they  had  gone,  and  there  was 
no  standard  of  that  kind  to  judge  him  by,  he  seemed 
different. 

"It'll  be  a  pleasant  change  for  her  finding  the  house 
comfortable,"  he  went  on,  "with  servants  to  answer  the 
bells,  and  half  a  dozen  bathrooms  where  there  wasn't 
one  before,  and  no  holes  in  the  carpets  to  trip  yourself 
over.  The  place  was  like  an  old  dust  heap  when  the 
lease  was  signed  three  weeks  ago.  But  you  may  bet 
I  made  the  furnishers  and  decorators  put  their  best  feet 
foremost,  and  I  must  say  they've  done  it  all  in  the  best 
style.  It's  a  nice  comfortable  English  house,  that  is  what 
it  is.  Mother  wanted  to  have  no  end  of  gilding  and  kick- 
shaws. I  put  my  foot  on  that  and  Per  backed  me  up." 

Alfred  shuffled  to  the  house  after  Claude  had  gone, 
and  made  his  way  to  the  dining  room,  where  he  expected 
to  find  the  portraits  of  his  brother  and  sister-in-law  in  pro- 
cess of  being  placed.  The  gallery  through  which  he  had 
first  to  pass  had  been  left  more  or  less  in  the  state  the 
Osbornes  had  found  it  in,  though  it  was  with  difficulty 
that  Mrs.  Osborne  had  been  persuaded  not  to  put  down 
a  carpet  on  the  polished  oak  boards.  But  she  had  had 
her  way  with  regard  to  a  few  Persian  rugs  which  had  been 
there,  and  which  she  pronounced  not  fit  to  be  seen,  and 
had  got  some  nice  thick  pieces  of  the  best  Kidderminster 


?2  THEOSBORNES 

instead.  Otherwise  the  Jacobean  oak  of  its  chairs,  tables 
and  book-cases  had  been  allowed  to  abide,  nor  had  she 
interfered  with  the  portraits  of  Wests  that  hung  on  its 
oak-panelled  walls.  But  with  the  hall  it  was  different; 
and  she  had  made  several  striking  changes  here.  There 
had  not  even  been  a  hatrack  in  it,  which  did  not  matter 
much  before,  since  the  Wests  had  not  entertained  there 
for  years,  and  you  could  put  your  hat  down  on  one  of  the 
low  oak  chests.  But  Mrs.  Osborne  intended  to  entertain 
a  great  deal,  and  the  first  thing  she  did  was  to  order  two 
large  mahogany  hatstands  with  a  sort  of  dock  for  umbrel- 
las beneath,  which  she  had  placed  one  on  each  side  of  the 
door.  On  the  white  plaster  walls  between  the  oak 
pillars  that  ran  up  to  the  roof  she  had  put  up  a  couple  of 
dozen  stags'  heads  (ordered  from  Roland  Ward)  and 
half  a  dozen  foxes*  masks,  which  gave  the  place  a  baronial 
and  sporting  air.  The  light  from  the  two  old  bronze 
lamps  similarly  was  quite  insufficient,  and  she  had  put 
up  four  very  solid  yet  elegant  (such  was  their  official 
description)  electric  standards,  one  in  each  corner  of  the 
hall,  while  over  the  central  table  she  suspended  another 
from  the  rafters  above,  slightly  ecclesiastic  in  design,  though 
indeed  it  might  suggest  an  earthly  coronet  of  overwhelm- 
ing proportions  as  much  as  a  heavenly  crown.  A  few 
stuffed  tarpons,  killed  by  Per  in  Florida,  carried  on  the 
sporting  note,  which  was  further  borne  out  by  a  trophy 
of  spears  and  battle  axes  and  bead  aprons  which  he  had 
brought  with  him  from  the  same  tour.  Finally,  she  had 
introduced  an  enormous  early  Victorian  mahogany 
sideboard  for  laying  a  cloak  or  a  coat  on,  and  on  this  also 
stood  a  stuffed  crocodile-lizard  sitting  up  on  its  hind-legs, 


THEOSBORNES  73 

and  carrying  in  its  fore  paws  a  tray  for  cards.  This  had 
been  a  birthday  present  to  her  from  Mrs.  Alderman  Price, 
who  was  expected  that  evening,  and  even  Percy,  who 
had  such  taste,  had  said  it  was  very  quaint.  So  there 
it  stood  in  the  middle  of  the  mahogany  sideboard,  carrying 
in  its  tray  only  the  card  of  the  clergyman  of  the  parish. 
But  Mrs.  Osborne  had  no  fear  about  callers;  she  was 
long  past  all  that,  and  surveying  the  hall  only  this  morning 
she  had  said  to  herself  with  great  satisfaction, "  I  declare 
I  shouldn't  have  known  it,  when  I  think  what  it  was  when 
I  first  see  it." 

Alfred  stood  and  looked  about  him  for  a  moment  or 
two  when  he  came  into  this  very  suitably  furnished  hall, 
and  observed  with  some  silent  amusement  that  Roland 
Ward's  label  was  still  attached  to  one  of  the  stag's  heads. 
This  he  did  not  remove;  indeed,  with  the  end  of  his  stick 
he  poked  it  into  a  rather  more  prominent  position.  Then 
he  passed  on  into  the  dining  room. 

The  two  portraits  were  already  hung,  for  Mr.  Osborne 
had  seen  at  once  where  they  should  go,  above  the  new 
mahogany  sideboard  which  was  like  that  in  the  hall,  and 
was,  in  fact,  as  Mrs.  Osborne  said,  "its  fellow."  The  win- 
dows took  up  the  long  side  opposite  to  them,  and  on  the 
other  two  were  some  half  dozen  portraits,  which  Alfred 
had  in  vain  tried  to  buy  before  now,  but  had  found  to 
his  chagrin  that  they  were  inalienable.  There  was  a 
Reynolds  there,  a  Gainsborough,  a  couple  of  Romneys, 
and  all  had  about  them  that  indefinable  air  of  race  and 
breeding  which  the  old  English  masters,  lucky  perhaps 
in  their  sitters,  or  at  any  rate  in  their  own  quality  of  vision, 
render  so  superbly.  Till  this  evening  the  third  wall 


74  THEOSBORNES 

had  been  empty;  now  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Osborne,  she  in 
all  her  jewels,  he  with  the  telephone  and  ledger,  shone 
there. 

Alfred  glanced  round  the  room,  but  his  eye  came  back 
to  these  two  portraits.  Sabincourt,  that  superb  modern 
artist,  had  done  the  sitters  justice,  justice  so  rough  that  it 
might  be  taken  for  revenge.  Mrs.  Osborne  sat  full 
face,  her  white  hair  gathered  beneath  the  all-round  tiara 
of  diamonds  that  she  felt  to  be  so  heavy.  Close  round 
her  neck  was  the  Land's  End  necklace,  but  a  rope  of 
pearls  reached  to  her  waist  and  was  fastened  there  by  an 
immense  ruby.  Her  large  pillowy  arms  were  bare  to  the 
shoulder;  in  one  hand  she  held  the  Perigaud  fan,  but  it 
was  so  grasped  that  the  rings  on  the  hand  that  held  it  as 
well  as  the  bracelets  were  in  evidence.  The  other  lay 
negligently,  knuckles  upwards,  on  the  carved  arms  of 
her  chair.  Her  face  wore  an  expression  of  fatuous 
content,  and  it  was  extremely  like  her,  cruelly  like  her. 
And  Edward  had  fared  as  well  (or  as  badly)  at  the  eminent 
hands  of  the  artist.  A  vulgar  kindly  face  peered  into 
his  ledger,  and  as  his  wife  said,  you  could  almost  hear 
the  telephone  bell  ring. 

Alfred  seemed  fascinated  by  the  sight  of  the  portraits, 
or  rather  by  the  sight  of  them  in  contrast  with  the  others. 
He  turned  on  the  electric  light  which  was  attached  to 
their  frames,  and  drawing  a  chair  from  a  table,  sat  down 
to  observe  them.  Then  he  suddenly  broke  into  a  spasm 
of  noisless  laughter,  and  slapped  his  thin  thigh  with  his 
withered  little  hand. 

After  a  while  he  rose. 

"But  I'll  get  Sabincourt  to  paint  one  of  Claude,"  he 


THEOSBORNES  75 

said  to  himself,  "and  then  ask  any  of  these  dealer-fools  if 
it's  a  West  or  an  Osborne,  bless  his  handsome  face." 


Dinner  that  night  was  an  extremely  lengthy  affair, 
but  "  informal-like,  quite  a  family  party, "  as  Mrs.  Osborne 
explained  to  several  of  her  guests,  as  she  informed 
them  whom  they  were  to  take  in  or  be  taken  in  by. 
May  Thurston  was  furnished  with  the  most  complete 
explanation. 

"I  thought  we'd  all  be  comfortable  and  not  stuck  up, 

Lady  Th Lady  May,  now  that  we've  left  London 

behind  us,"  she  said,  "and  though  I'm  well  aware,  my 
dear,  that  Sir  Thomas  ought  to  take  you  in,  by  reason 
of  your  rank,  since  Mr.  O.  takes  in  Lady  Austell,  and  the 
Earl  me,  I  thought  you'd  not  be  ill-pleased  if  I  passed  you 
off  with  your  young  man,  same  as  I've  treated  Lady  Dora 
in  sending  her  in  with  Claude.  And  so  all  you  young 
people  will  be  together,  and  a  merry  time  you'll  have,  I'll 
be  bound.  Ah,  there  is  Sir  Thomas;  I  must  explain 
to  him." 

Sir  Thomas  cared  little  for  precedence,  but  much  for 
his  dinner  and  more  for  his  wine.  He  was  considered 
quite  a  courtier  in  manner  at  Sheffield,  and  bowed  to 
Mrs.  Osborne  on  the  conclusion  of  her  explanation. 

"When  Mr.  Osborne  has  the  ordering  of  the  wines, 
and  Mrs.  Osborne  the  commanding  of  the  victuals," 
he  said  handsomely,  "he  would  be  a  man  what's  hard  to 
please  if  he  wasn't  very  well  content.  And  to  take  in 
Mrs.  Percy  is  an  opportunity,  I  may  say,  of  studying 
refinement  and  culture  that  doesn't  often "  Here  Mrs. 


76  THEOSBORNES 

Percy  herself  entered  the  room,  close  to  where  they  were 
standing,  and  he  broke  off,  conscious  of  some  slight 
relief,  for  he  was  one  of  those  people  who  can  very  easily 
get  into  a  long  sentence,  but  find  it  hard  to  rescue  them- 
selves from  being  strangled  by  it  when  once  there.  "But 
speak  of  an  angel, "  he  added,  "and  there  comes  a  flutter- 
ing of  wings." 

Thereafter  the  "gathering  of  the  clans,"  as  Mr.  Osborne 
usually  expressed  the  assembly  of  guests  for  dinner,  came 
thick,  but  before  they  were  gathered  a  deafening  gong 
announced  that  dinner  was  gathered  too.  Austell,  with 
his  weak  pale  face,  came  last  but  one,  and  finally  his 
mother  made  her  slow  and  impressive  entry.  She  looked 
like  an  elderly  dethroned  princess,  come  back  after  exile 
to  the  native  country  where  she  no  longer  ruled,  and 
stretched  out  both  hands  to  Mrs.  Osborne,  whom  she 
had  not  seen  since  her  arrival. 

"Dear  Mrs.  Osborne,"  she  said.  "How  glad  I  am! 
Quite  charming.  A  family  party!" 

"Clans  all  gathered  now,  Mrs.  O.,"  said  her  husband. 
"Let's  have  a  bit  of  dinner." 

The  dinner  was  served  throughout  on  silver;  a  grove 
of  wine  glasses  stood  at  the  right  hand  of  each  guest.  In 
deference  to  Alfred's  lumbago  all  windows  were  closed, 
and  the  atmosphere  soon  became  very  warm  and  com- 
fortable indeed.  An  immense  glass  chandelier  hanging 
above  the  table,  and  studded  with  electric  lights,  was 
the  chief  author  of  illumination,  but  clumps  of  other 
lights  were  on  the  walls,  and  each  picture  had  its  separate 
lamp.  Sir  Thomas's  courtier-like  speeches  soon  ceased, 
and  he  was  content  to  eat  and  listen  to  the  cultured  con- 


THEOSBORNES  77 

versation  that  flowed  from  Mrs.  Per's  lips,  while  his  face 
gradually  deepened  in  colour  to  a  healthy  crimson  and 
his  capacity  for  bowing  must  certainly  have  ceased  also. 
He  asked  the  butler,  whom  he  called  "waiter,"  which  was 
the  year  of  each  particular  vintage  that  was  so  lavishly 
pressed  upon  him,  and  occasionally,  after  sipping  it, 
interrupted  the  welling  of  the  cool  springs  of  culture  to 
look  codfish-like  up  the  table  toward  Mr.  Osborne,  and 
say,  "Capital  ninety-two,  this."  And  then  Mrs.  Per 
would  begin  again.  Her  talk  was  like  the  flowing  of  a 
syphon;  it  stopped  so  long  only  as  you  put  your  finger 
on  the  end  of  it,  but  the  finger  removed,  it  continued, 
uninterrupted,  pellucid,  without  haste  or  pause.  She 
was  the  daughter  of  a  most  respectable  solicitor  in  Sheffield, 
whose  father  and  grandfather  had  been  equally  highly 
thought  of,  and  Per  openly  acknowledged  that  some  of 
the  most  chaste  designs  in  the  famous  ornamental  tin- 
ware were  the  fruits  of  her  pencil.  But  with  the  modesty 
of  true  genius  she  seldom  spoke  of  drawing,  though  she 
was  so  much  wrapped  up  in  art,  but  discussed  its  kindred 
manifestations,  and  in  particular  the  drama. 

She  gave  a  sweet  little  laugh. 

"Oh,  Sir  Thomas,  you  flatter  me,"  she  said  in  response 
to  some  gross  and  preposterous  compliment  about  her 
age,  while  he  was  waiting  for  a  second  helping  of  broiled 
ham,  to  which  Mrs.  Osborne  had  successfully  tempted 
him.  "Indeed,  you  flatter  me.  I  am  quite  old  enough  to 
remember  Irving's  'Hamlet.'  What  an  inspired  perform- 
ance! It  made  me  quite  ill,  from  nervous  exhaustion, 
for  a  week.  I  had  a  silly  little  schoolgirl  'Hamlet'  of  my 
own  —  yes,  I  will  allow  I  was  at  school,  though  nearly 


78  THEOSBORNES 

on  the  point  of  leaving,  and  I  assure  you  Irving' s  'Hamlet' 
killed  it,  annihilated  it,  made  it — is  it  naughty  of  me? 
—  made  it  stillborn.  It  was  as  if  it  had  never  lived. 
How  noble  looking  he  was!" 

Sir  Thomas  raised  his  eyes  towards  Mrs.  Osborne. 
"Best  peach-fed  ham  I  ever  came  across,"  he  said.  "Won- 
derful man,  wasn't  he,  Mrs.  Percy?  Great  artist,  eh?" 

Dora  from  opposite  had  heard  the  end  of  this. 

"Claude,  dear,"  she  said,  "who  is  that  nice  fat  man? 
I  never  saw  anybody  like  his  dinner  so  much.  What 
an  angel!  It  is  funny  to  me,  you  know,  coming  back 
here  and  finding  you  of  all  people  in  that  heavenly  car, 
ready  to  drive  me  up  from  the  station.  We  didn't  go 
quite  the  shortest  way,  did  we?  Last  time  I  was  here 
there  was  only  our  old  pony-trap  to  take  me  and  my 
luggage,  so  I  had  to  walk.  And  do  you  know,  Mrs. 
Osborne  has  put  me  in  my  own  room." 

Claude  turned  towards  her.  In  spite  of  the  awful  heat 
caused  by  the  shut  windows  and  the  rich  exhalation  of 
roast  meats,  he  was  still  perfectly  cool. 

"I  did  that  pretty  well  then  ?"  he  said.  "  Do  you  remem- 
ber my  asking  you  about  the  house,  and  where  your  room 
was,  and  all  that?  So  you  never  guessed  why  I  asked? 
It  was  just  that  you  might  have  your  old  room  again. 
Such  a  business  as  there  was  with  the  mater.  She  said 
you  ought  to  be  on  the  first  landing,  where  those  big 
handsome  rooms  are.  But  I  said  'No.'  Give  Dora  the 
room  on  the  second  floor  beyond  the  old  school  room, 
and  you  won't  hear  any  complaints." 

"Ah,  that  makes  it  even  nicer  to  know  that  you  did  it,'* 
said  she. 


THEOSBORNES  79 

The  conversation  round  the  table  for  the  moment  had 
risen  to  a  roar.  Mrs.  Osborne  was  tempting  Alderman 
Price  to  the  sorbet  he  had  refused ;  Mrs.  Per  had  got  on  to 
"The  Bells,"  which  she  allowed  (incorrectly)  that  she 
had  not  seen ;  Mr.  Osborne  was  shouting  the  year  of  the 
liqueur  brandy  which  went  with  the  ice  to  Sir  Thomas; 
and  May  and  Mr.  Franklin  were  wrangling  at  the  tops 
of  their  voices  over  some  question  of  whether  a  certain 
dance  had  been  on  Tuesday  or  Wednesday.  Lady 
Austell  only  looked  slightly  aloof,  and  followed  the  direc- 
tion of  her  son's  eyes  which  were  fixed,  as  by  enchant- 
ment, on  the  picture  of  his  hostess.  And  the  crowd  and 
the  noise  seemed  to  make  a  silence  and  isolation  for  the 
two  lovers. 

"But  it  was  a  business  getting  my  way,"  he  said.  "I 
never  should  have  but  that  I  was  always  the  mater's 
favourite." 

Dora  heard  the  words  and  something  suddenly  jarred. 
Somehow  he  should  not  have  put  it  like  that ;  he  thought 

of  himself,  he  took  credit And  then  before  this  rather 

disconcerting  little  moment  succeeded  in  disturbing  her, 
she  looked  at  him  again.  There  was  the  cool  strong 
face,  the  smouldering  eyes,  that  upward  tilt  of  the  chin, 
each  inimitable,  each  Claude  and  no  other. 

"Favourite?"  she  said.  "Do  you  expect  me  to  be 
surprised?" 

Quails,  out  of  season,  but  probably  delicious,  had  come 
and  gone,  and  with  the  iced  fruit  salad  that  followed 
port  was  handed  round.  And  with  that  first  glass  of 
port  Mr.  Osborne  rose  to  his  feet. 

"Now  it's  the  first  glass  of  good  old  port  from  Oporto, 


8o  THE    OSBORNES 

Sir  Thomas,"  he  said,  "and  I  ask  the  company  to  drink 

a  health,  not  of  this  happy  couple  nor  of  that,  as  we 

well  might  do,  God  bless  you  my  clears,  but  to  someone 

else.    Toasts  I  know  are  in  general  given  after  the  dinner 

is  over,  and  I  hope  Mrs.  O.  has  got  a  savoury  for  you  yet, 

and  a  peach  or  two.    But  it's  been  my  custom  to  propose 

a  health  with  the  first  glass  of  port,  such  as  I  see  now  in 

my  hand." 

;    Sir  Thomas  gave  a  choked  laugh. 

"Wish  all  toasts  were  drunk  in  such  a  glass  of  port, 
Osborne,"  he  said. 

"Very  kind,  I'm  sure,  but  silence  for  the  chair,  Sir 
Thomas.  This  is  the  first  little  dinner  as  we've  had  here, 
and  may  there  be  many  to  follow  it,  with  all  present  as  I 
see  now.  Ladies  and  gentlemen,  who  has  had  the 
privilege  of  entertaining  you?  Why  Mrs.  Osborne! 
Maria,  my  dear,  your  health  and  happiness,  and  no 
speech  required.  God  bless  you,  Mrs.  O." 

It  was  a  complete  surprise  to  Mrs.  Osborne,  and  for  one 
moment  she  felt  so  shy  and  confused  she  hardly  knew 
which  way  to  look.  Then  she  knew,  and  with  her  kind 
blue  eyes  brimming  she  smiled  at  her  husband.  Every- 
one drank  something,  Sir  Thomas  his  complete  glass 
with  a  hoarse  murmur  of  "no  heel-taps" ;  Mrs.  Per  a  little 
sip  of  water  (being  a  teetotaller)  with  her  little  finger  in 
exclusive  elevation ;  Lady  Austell  something  at  random 
out  of  the  seven  glasses  at  her  right  hand,  which  had  all 
been  filled  at  different  periods  of  dinner  without  her 
observing.  And  Dora,  radiant,  turned  to  Claude. 

"Old  darlings,"  she  said  enthusiastically,  and  resumed 
her  conversation  with  Mr.  Franklin  on  her  right. 


THEOSBORNES  81 

But  Claude  was  not  quite  pleased  with  this  heartfelt 
interjection.  It  was  affectionate,  loving  even,  but  some- 
thing more  was  due  to  the  son  of  the  house.  The  inter- 
jection ought  to  have  been  a  little  more  formal  and 
appreciative.  It  should  have  saluted  the  importance 
and  opulence  of  his  parents  as  well  as  their  kindliness. 
After  all,  who  had  done  the  house  up,  and  made  it 
habitable  ? 

And  then  instantaneously  this  criticism  expunged  itself 
from  his  mind.  Dora  always  said  the  thing  that  was 
uppermost  in  her  mind  and  "old  darlings"  was  a  very 
good  thing  to  be  uppermost. 

Harry  Franklin  and  Claude  found  themselves  side  by 
side  when,  not  so  very  long  afterward,  the  ladies  left  the 
room,  and  Mr.  Osborne,  glass  in  hand,  went  round  the 
table  and  sat  between  Austell  and  Sir  Thomas.  The 
others,  with  the  exception  of  Alfred,  who  did  not  stir,  but 
continued  sitting  where  he  was  at  the  end  of  the  room  far 
away  from  door  and  window,  closed  up  also,  and  another 
decanter  of  the  '40  port  was  brought. 

"And  when  you've  given  me  news  of  that,  Lord  Austell 
and  Sir  Thomas,"  said  Mr.  Osborne  genially,  "I  warrant 
there'll  be  another  to  come  up  from  my  cellar  without 
leaving  it  empty  neither." 

The  prospect  seemed  to  invigorate  Sir  Thomas,  and 
he  emptied  and  filled  his  glass.  Austell  meantime  was 
taken  to  task  by  his  host  for  not  doing  the  same,  but  was 
courteously  firm  in  his  refusal,  in  spite  of  Mr.  Osborne's 
assurance  that  you  could  bring  up  a  child  on  this  port 
without  its  knowing  the  meaning  of  a  headache.  Harry 
Franklin  and  Claude  also  were  not  doing  their  duty,  so 


82  THE    OSBORNES 

Mr.  Osborne  reminded  them,  but  the  rest  were  sufficiently 

stalwart  to  satisfy  him. 

"And  the  Navron  quartette  are  playing  afterward,  are 
they  not?"  asked  Harry.  "May  told  me  so." 

Claude  frowned  slightly. 

"Yes,  but  when  they'll  be  able  to  begin,  I  don't  know,"  he 
said.  "  When  the  pater  gets  somebody  to  appreciate  his  port 
you  can't  tell  when  anything  else  will  begin  except  another 
bottle.  What  I  want  is  a  cigarette,  and  a  talk  to  Dora." 

"I've  got  some,"  said  Harry  innocently,  producing  his 
case,  and  taking  one  himself.  He  lit  it. 

"I  say,  you'd  better  wait,"  Claude  began,  when  the 
hoarse  voice  of  Sir  Thomas  interrupted  him.  "It's  dishon- 
our to  the  wine,"  he  said.  "Mr.  Osborne,  sir,  your  wine 
is  being  dishonoured  by  that  young  gentleman  opposite." 

Harry  did  not  catch  the  meaning  of  this  at  once,  and 
was  "put  at  his  ease  again"  by  Mr.  Osborne  before  he 
knew  that  he  was  not  there  already. 

"You're  all  right,  Mr.  Franklin,"  said  his  host,  "though 
in  general  we  don't  smoke  till  the  wine  has  finished  going 
round.  But  if  my  guests  mayn't  do  what  they  like  in  my 
house,  I'd  sooner  not  have  my  friends  round  my  table 
at  all  Drink  your  wine,  Sir  Thomas,  and  let  those 
smoke  who  choose." 

The  second  bottle,  which  was  not  to  leave  Mr.  Osborne's 
cellar  denuded,  had  appeared  before  this,  and  the  indig- 
nant drinker  cooled  down  over  it.  A  faint  little  squeak 
of  laughter  was  heard  from  Alfred,  who  had  sent  for  his 
plaid  again,  and  till  now  had  sat  perfectly  silent,  emptying 
and  filling  his  glass  as  many  times  as  possible.  At  this 
point  he  produced  a  large  cigar  and  lit  it  himself. 


THEOSBORNES  83 

' '  I  disagree  with  Sir  Thomas, ' '  he  said .  ' '  Good  tobacco 
and  good  wine  go  very  well  together,  very  well  indeed," 
and  he  embarked  on  the  nauseating  combination.  It  was 
now  half -past  ten,  and  a  message  came  in  from  the  drawing- 
room  as  to  whether  the  gentlemen  would  take  their  coffee 
in  the  dining  room  or  have  it  with  the  music.  This  caused 
a  break-up,  the  three  young  men,  Austell,  Claude,  and 
Franklin  going  out,  leaving  the  rest  at  the  table. 

"Those  young  fellows  will  please  the  ladies  more  than 
we  old  fogies  would,  hey,  Sir  Thomas  ?"  said  Mr.  Osborne. 
"We'll  follow  them  by-and-by.  It's  not  every  day  that 
one  meets  one's  old  friends,  and  has  a  glass  of  good  wine 
together.  Per,  my  boy,  I  hope  you're  taking  care  of 
yourself." 

Per  was  doing  this  very  adequately.  He  was  a  fat, 
white  young  man  of  nearly  thirty,  with  an  immensely  high 
forehead  from  which  the  tide  of  hair  had  already  receded 
far.  He  wore  pince-nez  and  a  large  diamond  ring,  and 
looked  rather  older  than  he  was  and  considerably  stouter 
than  he  should  have  been.  "Thank  you,  yes,  dad,"  he 
said.  "I'm  going  strong." 

This  furnished  Sir  Thomas,  whose  indignation  over 
the  cigarette  had  not  quite  yet  subsided,  with  a  text. 

"Yes,  my  boy,"  he  said,  "and  long  will  you,  when  you're 
not  afraid  of  your  dinner  and  your  glass  of  wine.  Half 
the  young  fellows  I  see  now  drink  barley  water  to  their 
dinner,  and  some  of  them  don't  eat  hardly  no  meat,  and 
that's  why  we're  losing  the  trade  of  the  world  as  well  as 
all  the  boat  races  and  what  not.  In  my  day  we  ate  our 
beef  and  drank  our  wine,  and  so  did  our  fathers  before 
us,  and  I  never  heard  that  we  lost  many  boat  races  then." 


84  THE    OSBORNES 

Sir  Thomas  did  not  say  whether  he  personally  had  ever 
won  any,  nor  did  Percy  give  testimony  to  the  value  of 
generous  diet  by  the  enumeration  of  any  athletic  feats  of 
his  own.  A  little  shrill  laugh  again  came  from  the  other 
end  of  the  table,  but  Sir  Thomas  did  not  hear  it. 

"'Look  at  those  three  young  fellows  who  went  out  —  no 
offence  to  you,  Mr.  Osborne,"  he  continued.  "  Why,  there 
wasn't  a  spare  ounce  of  flesh  on  any  of  their  bones,  and 
that  means  no  stamina.  They'd  shut  up  like  a  pocket- 
knife  if  it  came  to  a  tussle,  and  I  doubt  if  their  bones  are 
much  more  than  grizzle  with  the  messes  they  eat,  and  that 
not  enough  of  them.  No,  give  me  a  lad  who  eats  his 
steak  and  drinks  his  bottle  of  wine,  and  I'll  tell  you  whom 
to  back  in  business  or  across  country." 

"Well,  there's  sense  in  a  steak  to  my  thinking,"  said 
Mr.  Osborne,  "and  to  be  sure  our  fathers  ate  their  beef 
and  drank  their  beer  or  their  port  more  free  than  the 
young  fellows  do  now.  But  I'd  be  sorry  to  put  my 
money  against  Claude  if  it  came  to  a  run  or  a  cricket 
match.  He's  a  wiry  young  fellow,  though  he's  not  such 
a  hand  at  his  dinner  as  is  Percy." 

The  cackle  from  the  end  of  the  table  grew  louder, 
but  no  voice  followed.  Alfred  was  one  of  those  to  whom 
his  own  sense  of  humour  is  sufficient  in  itself.  Without 
a  word  he  got  up  and  shuffled,  still  wearing  his  overshoes, 
out  of  the  door. 


The  quartette  played  in  the  long  gallery  and  Claude, 
knowing  that  music  to  his  family  meant  nothing  except  a 
tune  which,  as  Mrs.  Osborne  said,  you  carry  away  with 


THEOSBORNES  85 

you,  had  steered  a  very  happy  course,  in  the  selection  of 
it,  so  as  to  satisfy  the  impulses  of  filial  piety  and  yet 
give  pleasure  to  those  who  like  Dora,  and,  it  may  be 
added,  himself,  did  not  want  so  much  to  carry  tunes 
away,  but  to  listen  to  music.  Thus  a  selection  from 
the  "Mikado,"  admirably  boiled  down  for  strings,  put 
everybody  in  a  good  humour,  and  Sir  Thomas  to 
sleep.  Later  on  a  similar  selection  from  "  Patience  "  made 
Mrs.  Osborne  again  beat  time  with  her  fan  without  dis- 
turbing Sir  Thomas,  and  for  the  rest  the  exquisite  inevit- 
able melodies  of  Bach  and  Scarlotti  filled  an  hour's 
programme.  And  when  it  was  over  Claude  turned  to 
Dora,  with  whom  he  was  sitting  in  a  window  seat,  and  his 
eyes  glowed  like  hot  coals. 

"Let's  come  out,"  he  said,  "and  stroll  down  to  the  lake. 
We  can't  stop  indoors  after  that.  Bach  should  always 
be  played  out  of  doors." 

That  was  finely  and  justly  felt;  the  next  moment  came 
a  jar. 

"They  charged  the  mater  a  hundred  and  fifty  guineas 
for  coming  down,"  he  said,"  but  it's  cheap,  I  shall  tell  her, 
for  real  good  music.  There's  no  price  you  can  put  upon 
a  thing  like  that." 

Again  with  Dora  the  check,  the  jar,  lasted  but  an 
infinitesimal  time,  as  she  turned  aside  to  pick  up  her  fan 
which  had  dropped,  and  as  she  met  his  eye  again  she 
felt  that  divine  discontent  which  so  vastly  transcended 
in  her  opinion  all  other  happiness.  And  it  appeared 
that  he,  too,  was  in  tune  with  that. 

"Come  out,  my  darling,"  he  said.  "Let's  get  away 
from  these  people  just  for  a  bit,  a  five  minutes.  I  don't 


86  THEOSBORNES 

want  any  more  music,  even  though  it  was  more  Bach. 
And  I  don't  want  any  supper,  do  you  ?  They're  going  to 
have  supper  now." 

Up  went  his  head,  with  that  little  unconscious  toss  of 
the  chin,  and  Dora  half  laughed  to  hear  how  at  this 
moment  he  seemed  to  put  Bach  and  supper  on  quite  the 
same  level,  when  there  was  the  prospect  of  strolling  with 
her  outside.  There  was  intense  sweetness  to  her  in  that, 
and  there  was  mastery  also,  which  she  loved.  She  felt 
that  even  if  she  had  not  cared  for  him,  and  even  if  she 
was  particularly  hungry,  she  would  have  to  go  with  him. 
But  as  she  rose  she  could  not  help  commenting  on  this, 
wanting,  woman-like,  to  hear  the  reply  that  her  heart 
had  already  shouted  to  her. 

"You  speak  as  if  Bach  and  supper  were  equally  unim- 
portant," she  said. 

"Of  course.  There's  not  a  pin  to  choose  between 
them,  if  you'll  just  come  out  with  me." 

"And  if  I  won't?" 

"But  you  will,"  he  said. 

"Not  even,  'please'?" 

He  shook  his  head. 

"Anything  sooner  than  'please,'"  he  said.  "Come  or 
not  just  as  you  like." 

To  Dora  this  was  tremendously  attractive:  the  abso- 
lute refusal  to  ask  anything  of  her  as  a  favour,  even 
when  he  so  intensely  wanted  it,  was  a  revelation  of  the 
eternal  masculine  not  opposed  to  but  in  accord  with  the 
eternal  feminine.  Nothing  seemed  to  her  more  fantas- 
tic and  sickly  than  the  sort  of  devotion  that  begged  for 
a  flower,  and  sighed  and  pined  under  a  woman's  unkind- 


THEOSBORNES  87 

ness  or  caprice.  "Here  is  my  heart,"  he  had  in  effect 
said  to  her,  "take  it  or  leave  it,  but  if  you  take  it  give  me 
yours."  Man  gave,  and  was  not  woman  to  give  too,  in 
her  own  kind?  She,  too,  longed  to  come  out  into  the 
warm  half -darkness  of  the  stars  with  him,  and  why,  in 
common  fairness,  should  he  be  supposed  to  sue  for  a 
favour  that  which  she  longed  to  grant  ? 

So  out  they  went  on  to  the  dim-paved  terrace  walk. 
Above  the  sky  was  clear  and  the  star-dust  strewn  thick 
over  the  floor  of  the  heaven,  and  the  fantastic  shape  of 
the  birds  on  the  yew  hedge  stood  clear  out  against  the 
luminous  and  velvet  blue.  A  little  draught  of  flower- 
scented  air  stole  up  through  the  square  doorways  in  the 
hedge  from  the  drowsy  beds,  that  but  dreamed  of  their 
daylight  fragrance,  and  somewhere  not  far  away  in  the 
park  a  night  jar  throbbed  its  bourdon  note,  making 
vibration  rather  than  sound.  Dora  put  her  hand  through 
his  arm  and  laughed. 

"I  laugh  for  pure  happiness,"  she  said,  "and  —  and 
oh,  Claude,  it's  the  real  me  who  is  with  you  now.  Do 
you  understand  ?  I  expect  not,  so  I  will  explain.  There 
are  several  me's;  you  rather  liked  No.  i,  which  was  the 
chattering  and  extremely  amusing  me;  that  was  the 
one  you  saw  first,  and  you  did  like  her.  Then  —  oh, 
well,  the  other  me's  are  all  varieties  of  that,  and  right  below 
them  all  is  the  real  me.  It  doesn't  know  sometimes 
whether  it  wants  to  laugh  or  cry  or  to  talk  or  be  silent; 

it  only  wants Oh,  it's  like  you  with  Bach  and  supper 

about  equal.  Laughing  and  crying  don't  particularly 
matter  if  there  is  you,  just  as  to  you  Bach  and  supper 
didn't  matter  if  there  was  me.  And  there  is.  It's  me, 


88  THEOSBORNES 

as  the  children  say.  And  you  and  I  make  us.  It  comes 
in  the  grammars.  I  only  wanted  to  tell  you  that.  And 
now  we'll  instantly  talk  about  something  else." 

Claude  stopped,  and  against  the  faint  luminance  of 
the  sky  she  saw  his  chin  protrude  itself. 

"I  don't  see  any  reason  for  doing  that,"  he  said.  "It's 
much  the  most  interesting  thing " 

"I  know." 

He  drew  her  toward  him. 

"Well,  you  might  give  a  fellow  a  kiss,"  he  said. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  morning  delicacy  to  which  Lady  Austell  was 
so  subject  was  due  to  the  fact  that  when 
staying  in  other  people's  houses  she  found  she  saw 
enough  of  her  hosts  and  fellow-guests  if  she  denied 
herself  the  pleasure  of  their  company  at  breakfast.  In 
all  other  respects,  she  was  stronger  than  most  horses, 
and  could  go  through  programmes  which  would  have 
prostrated  all  but  the  most  robust  without  any  feeling 
of  unpleasant  fatigue,  provided  only  that  the  programmes 
interested  or  amused  her  or  in  any  way  furthered  her 
plans.  But  she  really  became  tired  the  moment  she 
was  bored,  and  since  sitting  at  breakfast  with  ten  or 
twelve  cheerful  people,  with  the  crude  morning  sunlight 
perhaps  pouring  in  at  a  window  directly  opposite  her, 
bored  her  very  much,  she  chose  the  wiser  plan  of  not 
joining  in  those  public  festivities.  But  with  her  excellent 
tact  she  knew  that  at  a  house  like  Mrs.  Osborne's 
everybody  was  expected  to  come  down,  to  be  in  admirable 
spirits  and  to  eat  a  great  deal  of  solid  food,  and  so  she 
explained  to  Mrs.  Osborne  that  she  never  ate  any 
breakfast.  Hence  it  was  that  about  half -past  nine 
next  morning  her  maid  carried  upstairs  a  tray  groaning 
with  coffee,  hot  milk,  toast,  just  one  poached  egg,  and 
a  delicious  plate  of  fruit.  Mrs.  Osborne  had  given 
her  a  very  pleasant  sitting  room  next  her  bedroom, 
furnished  with  Messrs.  Linkwater's  No.  i  white  boudoir 

89 


go  THEOSBORNES 

suite,  for,  like  half  the  house,  it  had  been  practically 
unfurnished;  and  Austell  who  had  ascertained  those 
comfortable  facts  when  he  bade  his  mother  good-night 
the  evening  before,  caused  this  particular  groaning 
tray  to  be  brought  here  also  and  paddled  in  to  join 
her  in  carpet  slippers  and  a  dressing  gown. 

"I  call  this  a  devilish  comfortable  house  nowadays," 
he  observed,  "which  is  far  more  than  could  be  said 
for  it  in  our  time.  What  a  pity  the  Osbornes  and  we 
can't  run  it  together.  They  would  pay  the  bills,  and 
we  could  give  tone.  I  wish  it  was  possible  to  be 
comfortable,  though  poor.  But  it  isn't.  Everything 
comfortable  costs  so  much.  Now,  darling  mother,  let 
loose,  and  tell  me  what  you  think  of  it  all.  Really 
your  —  your  absence  of  breakfast  looks  quite  delicious. 
They  have  given  me  chops  and  beef  and  things.  May 
I  have  a  piece  of  your  melon?" 

Jim  and  his  mother  were  rather  fond  of  each  other, 
but  they  seldom  met  without  having  a  quarrel,  for  while 
both  were  agreed  in  the  general  plan  of  grabbing  at 
whatever  of  this  world's  goods  could  be  appropriated, 
each  despised  and,  in  private,  exposed  the  methods  of 
the  other.  He,  so  his  mother  was  afraid,  was  one  of 
the  very  few  people  who  was  not  afraid  of  her,  and 
she  often  wished  he  was.  He  had  lit  a  cigarette  after 
the  bath,  and  was  standing  in  front  of  the  fireplace,  on 
the  thick,  white  sheepskin  rug,  smoking  the  end  of  it. 

"Dear  Jim,"  she  said,  "do  you  think  you  had  better 
smoke  in  here?  Mrs.  Osborne  may  not  like  it." 

"Oh,  she  will  think  it  is  you,"  said  Jim  calmly,  "and 
so  won't  dare  to  say  anything.  She  fears  you:  I  can't 


THEOSBORNES  91 

think  why.  Now  do  tell  me  how  it  all  strikes  you. 
Can  you  bear  it  for  three  days?  I  can  easily;  I  could 
bear  it  for  months  and  years.  It  is  so  comfortable. 
Now  what  did  you  and  Mrs.  Osborne  talk  about  at 
dinner?  Mr.  O.  and  I  talked  about  the  Royal  Family. 
Sir  Thomas  seems  a  nice  man,  doesn't  he?" 

Lady  Austell  gave  him  a  very  generous  share  of  her 
half  melon;  it  looked  rather  like  a  bribe.  She  was 
going  to  indulge  in  what  Jim  called  humbug,  and  hoped 
he  would  let  it  pass. 

"I  think,  dear,  as  I  said  to  Dora  the  other  day," 
she  remarked, "  that  we  are  far  too  apt  to  judge  by  the 
surface.  We  do  not  take  enough  account  of  the  real 
and  sterling  virtues  —  honesty,  kindness,  hospitality — " 

Austell  cracked  his  egg. 

"I  did  not  take  enough  account  of  the  effect  of 
hospitality  last  night,"  he  remarked,  "because  I  ate 
too  much  supper,  and  felt  uncommonly  queer  when 
I  awoke  this  morning " 

"You  always  were  rather  greedy,  my  darling,'*  said 
Lady  Austell  softly,  scoring  one. 

"I  know.  I  suppose  I  inherited  it  from  my  deli — 
I  mean  cerebral-hsemorrhage  grandfather.  But  I  don't 
drink." 

This  brought  them  about  level.  Jim  proceeded  with 
a  smart  and  telling  stroke. 

"I  refer  my  —  my  failures  to  my  grandfather,"  he 
said,  "so  whatever  you  say  about  our  hosts,  dear  mother, 
I  shall  consider  that  you  are  only  speaking  of  their 
previous  generations.  Their  hospitality  is  unbounded, 
their  kindness  prodigious,  but  I  asked  you  how  long 


92  THEOSBORNES 

you  could  stand  it?  Or  perhaps  the  —  the  polish, 
the  culture,  the  breeding  of  our  hosts  really  does  seem 
to  you  beyond  question.  Did  you  see  the  stuffed 
crocodile-lizard  in  the  hall?  I  will  give  you  one  for 
your  birthday." 

"I  think  you  are  odiously  ungrateful,  Jim,"  she  said. 
"I  have  got  them  to  take  Grote  for  seven  years  at  a  really 
unheard-of  price,  and  all  I  get  in  return  is  this." 

Jim  opened  his  pale  weak  eyes  very  wide. 

"What  have  I  done?"  he  said.  "I  have  only  agreed 
with  you  about  their  kindness,  and  asked  your  opinion 
about  their  breeding." 

"You  are  sarcastic  and  backbiting,"  said  his  mother. 

"Only  as  long  as  you  talk  such  dreadful  nonsense, 
darling  mother,"  he  said.  "You  don't  indulge  in  rhap- 
sodies about  the  honesty  of  your  housemaid.  Honesty 
in  a  housemaid  is  a  far  finer  quality  than  in  a  millionaire, 
because  millionaires  are  not  tempted  to  be  dishonest, 
whereas  poor  people  like  housemaids  or  you  and  me 
are.  Really,  I  only  wanted  to  have  a  pleasant  little 
chat  about  the  Osbornes,  only  you  will  make  it  serious, 
serious  and  insincere.  Let's  be  natural.  I'll  begin." 

He  took  one  of  his  mother's  crisp  hot  rolls,  and 
buttered  it  heavily. 

"I  find  Mr.  and  Mrs.  O.  quite  delightful,"  he  said, 
"and  should  have  told  you  so  long  ago  if  you  had  only 
been  frank.  I  do  really.  There  isn't  one  particle  of 
humbug  about  them,  and  they  have  the  perfect  ease 
and  naturalness  of  good  breeding." 

Lady  Austell  tossed  her  head. 

"That  word  again,"  she  said.     "You  seem  to  judge 


THEOSBORNES  93 

everybody  by  the  standard  of  a  certain  superficial  veneer, 
which  you  call  breeding." 

"I  know.  One  can't  help  it.  I  grant  you  that  lots 
of  well-bred  people  are  rude  and  greedy,  but  there  is 
a  certain  way  of  being  rude  and  greedy  which  is  all 
right.  I'm  greedy,  so  was  the  cerebral  grandpapa,  only 
he  was  a  gentleman  and  so  am  I.  I'm  rude:  I  don't 
get  up  when  you  come  into  the  room  and  open  the  door 
for  you,  and  shut  the  window.  Claude  —  brother  Claude 
—  does  all  these  things,  and  yet  he's  a  cad." 

"I  consider  Claude  a  perfect  gentleman,"  said  Lady 
Austell  with  finality. 

"I  know:  that  'perfect'  spoils  it  all,"  said  Jim  medi- 
tatively. "Now  Mr.  Osborne  is  a  frank  cad  —  that's 
how  I  put  it  —  and  Claude  a  subtle  one.  That's  why 
I  can't  stand  him." 

"I  daresay  you'll  do  your  best  to  live  on  him,"  said 
Lady  Austell. 

"Certainly;  though  I  shall  probably  succeed  without 
doing  my  best.  It  will  be  quite  easy  I  expect." 

"And  do  you  think  that  is  a  gentlemanly  thing  to 
do?"  asked  his  mother,  "when  behind  his  back  you  call 
him  a  subtle  cad?" 

"Oh,  yes,  quite;  though  no  perfect  gentleman  would 
dream  of  doing  it.  I  think  Claude  has  masses  of  good 
points:  he  simply  bristles  with  them,  but  he  gives  one 
such  shocks.  He  goes  on  swimmingly  for  a  time,  and  then 
suddenly  says  that  somebody  is  'noble  looking,'  or  that 
the  carpet  is  'tasteful'  or  'superior.'  Now  Mr.  Osborne 
doesn't  give  one  shocks;  you  know  what  to  expect, 
and  you  get  it  all  the  time." 


94  THE    OSBORNES 

Lady  Austell  thought  this  over  for  a  moment ;  though 
Austell  was  quite  unsatisfactory  in  almost  all  ways  of 
life,  it  was  impossible  to  regard  him  as  a  fool,  and 
he  had  the  most  amazing  way  of  being  right. 
Certainly  this  view  of  the  frank  cad  and  the  subtle 
cad  had  an  air  of  intense  probability  about  it, 
but  it  was  one  of  those  things  which  his  mother 
habitually  chose  to  ignore  and  if  necessary  deny 
the  existence  of. 

"I  hope  you  will  not  say  any  of  those  ridiculous  things 
to  Dora,"  she  remarked. 

"Ah;  then  it  is  just  because  they  are  not  ridiculous 
that  you  wish  me  to  leave  them  unsaid.  If  they  were 
ridiculous  you  would  not  mind " 

Jim  waited  a  second  to  give  his  mother  time  to  con- 
tradict this  if  she  felt  disposed.  Apparently  she  did 
not,  and  he  interrupted  her  consenting  silence. 

"I  shall  not  say  them  to  Dora,  I  promise  you,"  he 
said,  "because,  in  case  they  had  not  occurred  to  her, 
she  might  see  the  truth  of  them,  and  it  might  put  her 
off.  That  would  damage  my  chances  of  living  on  him. 
It  would  be  very  foolish  of  me.  Besides,  I  have  no 
quarrel  with  Dora — I  like  Dora.  But  my  saying  these 
things  to  her  is  superfluous,  I  am  afraid.  She  sees 
them  all  perfectly,  though  to  you  they  apparently  seem 
ridiculous.  Or  am  I  wrong,  mother,  and  do  you  only 
pretend  to  think  them  ridiculous?" 

Lady  Austell  felt  she  could  fight  a  little  on  this 
ground. 

''They  seem  to  me  quite  ridiculous  in  so  far  as  they 
apply  to  Dora,"  she  said.  "She  is  deeply  in  love  with 


THEOSBORNES  95 

him,  dear  child,  and   do  you  suppose  that  she  stops  to 
consider  whether  he  says  'tasteful'  or  not?" 

Jim  smiled  with  faint  malice. 

"No,  she  does  not  stop  to  consider  whether  he  says 
it  or  not,"  he  replied,  "because  it  is  perfectly  clear  that 
he  does.  But  when  he  does,  she  pauses.  Not  for 
long,  but  just  for  a  second.  She  doesn't  exactly  wince, 
not  a  whole  wince,  at  least,  but  just  a  little  bit  of  one. 
You  can't  help  it  if  you  are  not  accustomed  to  it.  If 
I  was  going  to  marry  Mrs.  Osborne,  I  should  wince  a 
little  now  and  then.  I  don't  in  the  least  wonder  that 
she's  in  love  with  him.  I  wish  you  would  find  me  a 
girl,  who  would  marry  me,  as  handsome  and  rich  as 
Claude.  The  only  thing  is ' 

Jim  finished  breakfast,  and  was  going  slowly  round 
the    room     looking    at    the    furniture.      He     paused 
in    front  of  a  saddlebagged   divan  with  his  head   on   . 
one  side. 

"The  only  thing  is  that  though  she  may  get  accustomed 
to  'tasteful,'  she  may  also  get  accustomed  to  his 
extraordinary  good  looks.  Of  course,  then  there's  the 
money  to  fall  back  upon.  I  don't  think  I  should  ever 
get  accustomed  to  so  much.  What  is  —  is  Uncle  Alfred 
going  to  allow  him  on  his  marriage?" 

"Fifteen  thousand  a  year,  I  believe,"  said  Lady 
Austell  gently,  as  if  mentioning  some  departed  friend. 

Jim  gave  a  little  sigh  in  the  same  style.  He  had  a 
dreadfully  inconvenient  memory,  and  remembered  that 
the  original  sum  suggested  was  twelve  thousand,  which 
his  mother  had  thought  decent  but  not  creditable.  There 
was  no  doubt,  so  he  framed  the  transaction  to  himself, 


96  THEOSBORNES 

that  she  had  "screwed  this  up"  to  fifteen.  So  he  sighed 
appreciatively,  and  his  comment  that  followed  was 
of  the  nature  of  a  testimonial. 

"When  I  marry  I  shall  leave  the  question  of  settle- 
ments completely  in  your  hands,  if  you  will  allow  me," 
he  said.  "I  think  you  are  too  clever  for  anybody." 

It  was  not  once  or  twice,  but  many  times,  that  Lady 
Austell  had  told  her  son  the  complete  truth  in  answer 
to  some  question  of  his,  and  when  she  had  said  "fifteen 
thousand,  I  believe,"  it  was  only  reasonable  to  expect 
that  the  answer  would  be  satisfactory.  But  Jim  always 
remembered  something  else,  and  his  memory  was  terribly 
good.  It  was  not  that  he  considered  twelve  thousand 
a  poor  sum:  he  only  recalled  to  his  mother's  mind  the 
fact  that  she  had  successfully  suggested  fifteen.  And 
he  had  not  openly  stated  the  fact :  he  had  merely  requested 
her  kindly  aid  with  regard  to  his  own  marriage  settle- 
ments, if  there  were  ever  to  be  any.  That  should  have 
been  to  her  a  completely  gratifying  request;  as  it  was, 
it  left  her  with  the  sense  of  having  been  found  out.  The 
complete  correctness  of  this  impression  was  shown  by 
Austell' s  next  words. 

"I  think  you  have  been  fearfully  brilliant  about  it," 
he  said,  "and  I  am  sure  you  have  made  them  all  think 
that  you  considered  fifteen  thousand  far  too  much.  Do 
tell  me:  didn't  you  say  that  you  thought  it  was  a  great 
responsibility  for  so  young  a  couple  to  be  —  to  be  stewards 
of  so  much  wealth  ?  Lord,  how  I  wish  somebody  would 
make  me  a  steward.  Come  in." 

Somebody  had  tapped  at  the  door,  and  to  tell  the 
truth  Lady  Austell  was  not  very  sorry  to  have  an  inter- 


THEOSBORNES  97 

ruption,  for  she  had  actually  used  the  words  that  Jim 
had  conjectured  in  a  little  talk  with  Mr.  Osborne  and 
his  brother  in  which  settlements  were  very  genteelly 
and  distantly  alluded  to.  But  there  had  been  a  dis- 
tinct twinkle  in  Alfred's  eye  at  this  point,  and  she  did 
not  want  more  cross-examinations.  The  interruption, 
therefore,  was  welcome. 

Mrs.  Osborne  entered,  looking  hot  and  pleased.  Jim 
at  this  moment  was  looking  at  a  large  engraving  of 
Landseer's  "Monarch  of  the  Glen"  (part  of  the  No.  i 
white  boudoir  set)  in  an  angle  of  the  room  parallel  to 
the  door,  and  she  did  not  at  once  see  him. 

"Good  morning,  Lady  Austell,"  she  said.  "I  thought 
I  would  just  step  up  and  see  what  you  would  fancy 
doing  this  beautiful  day.  There's  some  of  the  party 
going  to  motor  over  to  Pevensey " 

Mrs.  Osborne  caught  sight  of  Jim,  and  gave  a  faint 
scream. 

"And  I'm  sure  if  I  don't  beg  your  pardon,  Lord 
Austell,"  she  said  with  averted  head,  "for  I  never  guessed 
you  were  here  paying  a  morning  visit  to  your  mamma 
in  your  bath  wrapper.  But  I  thought  somebody  said 
'Come  in,'  for  I  always  tap  at  every  door  now,  or  clear 
my  throat  to  give  warning,  with  so  many  lovers  about, 
bless  them." 

"Yes,  I  said  'Come  in,'"  said  Austell.  "Mayn't 
I  come  and  talk  to  you  and  my  mother?  I  thought  my 
dressing  —  bath  wrapper  was  rather  smart." 

It  was  rather,  being  of  blue  silk,  new  and  unpaid 
for,  and  with  Mrs.  Osborne's  permission  he  joined  them. 
It  had  given  her  quite  a  turn  for  a  moment  to  find  that 


98  THEOSBORNES 

she  had  intruded  on  an  earl  in  his  dressing  gown,  but 
she  rapidly  recovered. 

"Why,  it's  beautiful,"  she  said,  "and  such  a  figure 
as  Mr.  O.  is  in  his  old  green  padded  wrapper  as  hardly 
comes  to  his  knees!  It  was  the  thought  of  that  that 
gave  me  such  a  turn  at  finding  a  gentleman  in  his  dressing 
gown.  But  I'm  sure  I  needn't  have  minded.  And 
what  will  you  be  thinking  of  doing,  Lord  Austell?  It's 
Liberty  Hall,  as  Mr.  O.  and  I  always  tell  our  guests, 
and  the  more  they  say  what  they  like  to  do,  the  better 
we're  pleased." 

Lady  Austell  had  lit  a  cigarette  just  before  Mrs. 
Osborne's  entrance,  and,  still  looking  at  her,  with  her 
usual  bereaved,  regretful  smile,  was  making  efforts  to 
pass  it  to  Jim  behind  the  shelter  of  the  table.  He  observed 
this,  and  with  a  stealthy  movement  took  it  from  her, 
for  though  they  exposed  each  other  in  private,  they 
were  firm  allies  in  the  presence  of  others. 

"I've  been  having  such  a  scolding  from  my  mother," 
he  said,  "for  smoking  in  here,  but  I  told  her  you  were 
far  too  good-natured  to  mind.  Have  I  done  very  wrong?" 

Mrs.  Osborne  beamed. 

"And  me  just  saying  that  the  more  our  guests  pleased 
themselves  the  better  we  were  pleased!"  she  exclaimed. 
"Well,  what  is  it  to  be,  Lady  Austell?  A  drive  to 
Pevensey,  with  Sir  Thomas  and  Mrs.  Percy,  and  I'm 
sure  there'll  be  no  difficulty  about  getting  another  gentle- 
man when  it's  known  as  you  are  going,  or  a  stroll  or 
what-not,  and  a  bit  of  lunch  quietly  at  home,  and  maybe 
a  drive  afterward.  Give  it  a  name,  Lady  Austell, 
and  it's  settled." 


THEOSBORNES  99 

Lady  Austell  turned  one  glance  of  gratitude  at  her  son, 
and  continued  to  smile  at  her  hostess. 

"You  are  too  kind,"  she  said,  "  but  as  I've  just  been  tell- 
ing Austell,  what  I  should  really  like  to  do  best  would  be 
to  spend  the  morning  quietly  by  myself,  going  over 
the  dear  old  place  again.  And  then  may  we  see  how 
the  afternoon  turns  out?" 

This  pathetic  mention  of  the  "dear  old  place,"  though 
"dilapidated  old  barrack"  would  have  been  a  far  more 
accurate  description  of  Grote  as  it  was,  made  Mrs. 
Osborne  feel  quite  apologetic.  She  spoke  to  her  husband 
about  it  afterwards.  "I  assure  you,  my  dear,"  she 
said,  "to  see  her  sitting  there  with  that  sad  smile  it 
was  quite  touching,  as  if  it  ought  to  have  been  she 
who  asked  me  what  I  would  fancy  doing.  Well,  it's 
one  up  and  another  down  in  this  world,  and  after  all 
we've  done  something  in  taking  the  place  off  their 
hands,  and  putting  a  stick  or  two  of  furniture  in  it,  and 
keeping  the  rain  out.  And  the  white  boudoir  suite,  it 
looks  beautiful;  I  hadn't  seen  it  since  they  put  it  in." 

"Well,  I'm  sure  the  oftener  Lady  A.  favours  us  with 
her  visits,  the  more  we  shall  be  pleased,"  said  Mr. 
Osborne.  "And  we  give  them  a  rattling  good  rent 
for  it,  my  dear,  when  all's  said  and  done.  Why,  there's 
the  motor  coming  round  now,  and  the  clock  striking 
twelve  already.  Sir  Thomas  would  like  a  glass  of 
sherry,  I'll  be  bound,  before  his  long  drive." 

"And  I  must  see  cook,"  said  Mrs.  Osborne,  "and 
half  the  morning  gone  already.  Have  you  any  fancy 
for  dinner,  to-night,  my  dear?" 

Mr.  Osborne  thought  for  a  moment. 


ioo  THEOSBORNES 

"No,  peace  and  plenty,  my  dear,"  he  said,  "such 
as  we've  always  had,  Maria.  I  shall  be  in  for  lunch, 
too.  Thank  God,  old  Claude  doesn't  want  any  music 
to-night.  We  was  hurried  away  from  table  last  night, 
and  I  think  Sir  Thomas  felt  he  hadn't  done  justice  to 
my  port:  '40,  Maria,  and  needs  a  lot  of  justice.  But 
to-night  he  shall  have  his  skin  full." 

"Well,  but  Claude  has  said  as  how  pleased  Dora 
was  with  the  music,"  said  Mrs.  Osborne,  "and  we're 
going  to  have  a  second  go  this  evening.  You  can't  deny 
them  their  music,  Mr.  O." 

Mr.  Osborne  paused  on  his  way  to  the  door. 

"Nor  I  don't  want  to,"  he  said,  "though  myself,  I 
hate  that  scratching  sound.  But  last  night,  Mrs.  O., 
I  don't  mind  telling  you,  what  with  young  —  young 
Franklin  lighting  up  before  we'd  got  into  the  wine  at 
all,  and  Claude  and  he  leaving  the  room  to  join  the 
ladies,  and  I'm  sure  I  don't  wonder,  the  dining  room  was 
a  sort  of  Clapham  Junction.  And  you  telling  me  not 
to  stop  too  long  there  and  all.  To-night  give  us  time 
to  sit  and  think,  and  if  Claude  wants  his  concert,  God 
bless  the  boy,  let  him  have  it.  But  let  it  be  made  clear 
that  those  who  want  their  wine  and  a  talk,  sit  and  have 
it,  and  don't  feel  they're  expected.  It's  little  I  drink 
myself,  as  well  you  know,  but  there's  Sir  Thomas,  who's 
a  fish  for  his  liquor,  and  little  harm  it  seems  to  do  him. 
I  like  my  guests  to  have  what  they  want,  Maria,  and 
there's  no  reason  why  some  of  us  shouldn't  stay  quiet 
and  pass  the  bottle,  while  others  listen  to  them  fiddles. 
That's  tne  way  we've  got  on,  old  lady,  by  giving  every- 
body what  they  want,  and  of  the  best  quality.  Well, 


THEOSBORNES  101 

let's  do  so  still.  Those  that  care  to  leave  the  table  this 
evening,  let  them  leave,  but  don't  let  there  be  any  pressure 
on  such  as  like  to  remain.  Lord,  if  there's  Mrs.  Per 
not  coming  out  already  with  all  her  fallals  on!  I  must 
go  and  get  Sir  Thomas  his  glass  of  sherry." 

Mr.  Osborne  was  in  every  way  the  most  hospitable 
of  men,  and  he  would  have  felt  it  as  a  personal  disgrace 
if  (as  never  happened)  any  guest  of  his  had  not  all  the 
wine  he  wanted,  even  as  he  would  have  felt  it  a  personal 
disgrace  if  any  guest  was  not  met  at  the  station,  or  did 
not  have  sufficient  breakfast.  But  wine  to  his  mind 
was  something  of  quite  a  different  class  to  all  other 
hospitalities,  and  was  under  his  personal  control,  so 
that  if  Sir  Thomas  liked  his  drop  of  sherry  in  the 
middle  of  the  morning,  Mr.  Osborne,  if  the  sherry 
decanter,  as  proved  to  be  the  case  this  morning,  was 
empty,  had  personally  to  go  down  to  the  cellar,  followed 
by  Thoresby  with  a  taper,  and  fish  out  from  the  bin  the 
bottle  he  wanted.  Moreover,  as  the  motoring  party 
had  finished  breakfast  nearly  two  hours  ago,  and  would 
not  get  their  lunch  for  nearly  two  hours  after,  Mrs. 
Osborne  had  ordered  a  tray  of  the  more  sustaining 
sorts  of  sandwiches,  a  cold  ham,  and  a  dish  or  two  of 
fruit  to  be  put  ready  in  the  dining-room  to  fortify  them 
for  their  drive;  for  when  they  did  have  lunch  it  would 
only  be  a  cold  picnic  kind  of  lunch  which  they  carried 
with  them  in  a  huge  wicker  basket  like  a  coffin,  which 
two  of  the  resplendent  footmen  were  even  now  staggering 
under,  and  bearing  out  to  the  motor.  For  the  sake  of 
good  fellowship  several  of  the  party  who  were  not  going 
on  this  prodigious  expedition  joined  the  travellers  in 


102  THEOSBORNES 

this  collation,  for,  as  Mr.  Osborne  said,  with  a  large 
plate  of  ham  in  front  of  him,  "It  made  a  bit  of  a  break 
in  the  morning  to  have  a  mouthful  of  sherry  and  a 
dry  biscuit.  Help  yourself,  Per,  my  boy,  for  you're 
the  guard  of  this  personally  conducted  tour,  and 
you'll  need  a  bite  of  something  before  you  get  your 
lunch." 

Jim  Austell  meantime  had  gone  back  to  his  room, 
from  which  he  ejected  two  flurried  housemaids  who 
were  emptying  things  into  each  other,  and  dressed  in 
a  leisurely  manner.  He  found  a  letter  or  two  on  his 
dressing  table,  and  among  them  a  note  from  Mr. 
Osborne' s  secretary  containing  an  extremely  satisfactory 
cheque  for  the  first  quarter's  rent  of  Grote,  and  with 
great  promptitude  he  despatched  it  to  his  bank.  Then, 
coming  downstairs  and  out  on  to  the  terrace,  he  found 
Claude  rather  impatiently  waiting  for  the  return  of 
Dora,  who  had  strayed  off  after  breakfast  with  May 
Thurston,  and  challenged  him  to  a  game  of  croquet, 
in  which  the  two  were  still  engaged  when  the  girls  came 
back  from  their  walk.  They  refused  to  join,  and  May 
went  into  the  house  while  Dora  drew  a  chair  to  the 
edge  of  the  ground  and  watched.  Jim,  wallowing  in 
the  remembrance  of  his  cheque,  had  proposed  a  sovereign 
on  the  game  and  Claude  had  accepted.  The  game, 
therefore,  since  money  was  concerned,  was  serious,  but 
Dora,  not  knowing  this,  was  not.  She  had  a  great  deal 
to  say. 

"I  think  Englishmen  are  perfect  butchers,"  she  said. 
"The  whole  of  the  long  glade  is  simply  one  mass  of 
the  most  heavenly  young  pheasants,  who  ran  to  us  in 


THEOSBORNES  103 

flocks  to  be  fed.  Then  comes  October,  and  when  they 
run  to  be  fed  you  shoot  them  in  the  eye." 

"There  you're  wrong,  Dora,"  said  Jim,  calmly  taking 
aim,  "you  shoot  at  running  rabbits,  but  not " 

"Oh  well,  you  know  what  I  mean,  and  you  call  it 
sport.  There,  that  serves  you  right,  Jim,  now  it's 
Claude's  turn  and  he's  got  you.  Oh,  Claude,  what 
a  beautiful  shot!  Wasn't  it  lucky  it  hit  the  wire  first? 
If  it  hadn't  it  would  have  missed  blue  altogether." 

Claude  did  not  reply:  even  though  it  was  Dora  who 
was  talking,  the  fact  that  at  the  present  moment  he 
was  playing  a  game  overrode  all  other  considerations. 
He  would  have  much  preferred  to  stop  playing  the  game, 
and  talk  to  her  instead,  but  since  that  was  impossible 
he  continued  to  be  entirely  absorbed  in  what  he  was 
doing.  The  balls  (after  the  beautiful  shot)  were  well 
placed  for  a  break,  but  a  little  consideration  was  necessary. 
Then  a  somewhat  lengthy  and  faultless  exhibition 
followed.  At  the  end  he  came  and  sat  down  on  the 
grass  by  Dora. 

"Not  a  bad  break,"  he  said,  "I  shall  have  a  cigarette." 

"What  are  we  going  to  do  after  lunch?"  asked  she 
gently,  as  Jim  walked  off  to  the  far  end  of  the  ground. 

"Just  exactly  whatever  you  like  so  long  as  we  do  it 
by  ourselves.  I  haven't  seen  you  all  morning." 

"I  know;  it's  been  beastly,"  said  she,  "but  May's 
a  dear,  you  know,  and  she  wanted  to  talk  about  Harry, 
and  I  rather  wanted  to  talk  about  you,  so  we  both  talked 
together,  and  I  can't  remember  a  word  she  said." 

Claude  was  lying  face  downward  on  the  grass,  nursing 
his  match,  and  Dora  was  looking  at  the  short  hair  on 


I04  THEOSBORNES 

the   back   of   his   neck.    Then   quickly   and    suddenly 

she  looked  up. 

"Oh,  Jim,  you  cheated,"  she  cried.  "I  saw  you  move 
that  ball  with  your  foot.  What  a  brute  he  is!  He 
always  cheats  at  croquet,  and  is  always  found  out.  I 
don't  cheat:  I  only  lose  my  temper.  Claude,  dear, 
keep  an  eye  on  him.  Or  perhaps  you  cheat  too,  do 
you  ?  Oh,  what  a  heavenly  day.  Do  let's  go  on  the 
lake  after  you've  finished  your  game.  You  shall  row 
and  steer,  and  I  shall  encourage  you." 

Dora  passed  over  the  fact  of  Jim's  cheating  as  she 
passed  over  the  other  numerous  topics  of  her  conver- 
sation, things  to  be  alluded  to  and  left  behind,  and  Claude, 
sitting  up  again  when  he  had  got  a  light,  made  no  comment 
whatever  to  it.  Jim  continued  to  play  calmly  and 
correctly,  and  at  the  end  of  his  break  came  toward  them, 
leaving  an  unpromising  position. 

"You  talk  more  rot  in  a  short  space  of  time  than 
anyone  I  ever  saw,"  he  remarked.  "What  with  shooting 
at  running  pheasants  and  saying  I  cheat,  yo.u  make  my 
head  whirl." 

"Oh,  but  you  did,  I  saw  you,"  said  Dora  calmly. 
"Why  not  grant  it?" 

She  paused  a  moment  as  Claude  aimed,  and  then 
continued : 

"Oh,  Claude,  what  bad  luck!  Or  did  it  hit  it?  I 
almost  thought  I  saw  it  tremble,  and  in  a  minute  I 
shall  be  sure  of  it." 

"I  thought  it  hit,"  said  Jim. 

"No,  I'm  sure  it  didn't,"  said  Claude.  "Full  inch 
.between  them." 


THEOSBORNES  105 

The  game  was  over  in  a  couple  of  turns  after  this, 
but  Dora,  finding  it  hot  on  her  grassy  bank,  had  gone 
down  to  sit  in  the  boat  and  wait  for  Claude.  At  the 
conclusion  of  the  game  he  produced  a  sovereign  and 
handed  it  to  Jim. 

"You  gave  me  a  good  thrashing,"  he  said,  "couldn't 
get  in  but  that  once." 

"Thanks.  Yes,  you  had  bad  luck  all  through.  I 
say  .  .  .  You're  satisfied  that  Dora  was  talking 
nonsense?" 

"About  what?" 

"When  she  said  I  cheated.  Of  course  I  did  nothing 
of  the  kind." 

"Why,  of  course  I'm  satisfied  if  you  tell  me  so,"  said 
Claude.  "Are  you  coming  down  to  the  lake?" 

"Not  I.     Dora  would  hurl  me  overboard." 

Claude  strolled  away  and  Jim  walked  aimlessly  about, 
taking  shots  across  the  lawn  with  various  balls.  He 
knew  perfectly  well  that  he.  had  cheated,  but  it  was 
the  worst  luck  in  the  world  that  Dora  had  looked  up 
that  moment.  There  had  been  a  ball  quite  close  to 
his,  but  as  far  off  as  if  it  had  been  in  a  better  world  by 
reason  of  the  fact  that  it  was  lying  neatly  and  inac- 
cessibly behind  the  stump.  He  had  just  moved  it  with 
his  foot  as  he  went  by,  without,  so  he  told  himself,  more 
than  half  meaning  to.  That  was  quite  characteristic 
of  him;  he  but  rarely  fully  meant  that  sort  of  thing; 
something  external  to  himself  seemed  to  suggest  a  paltry 
little  manoeuvre  of  this  kind,  and  he  yielded  to  it  in  an 
absent-minded  sort  of  way,  without  any  particular 
intention.  Had  the  game,  in  fact,  gone  on  without 


io6  THEOSBORNES 

attention  being  called  to  it,  he  would  probably  have 
nearly  forgotten  about  it  by  now. 

But  Claude's  remark,  though  innocent  and  even 
cordial  (considering  what  he  himself  privately  knew), 
irritated  him  a  good  deal.  He  had  said  that  of  course 
he  was  satisfied  since  Jim  had  told  him  so.  That  looked 
as  if  he  would  not  have  been  satisfied  if  he  had  not 
been  told,  an  utterly  unjustifiable  attitude,  since  he 
had  never  given  Claude,  so  far  as  he  knew,  the  very 
smallest  grounds  for  supposing  that  he  himself  was 
capable  of  cheating  at  croquet  or  anything  else.  Perhaps 
in  Sheffield  it  was  the  right  thing  to  cheat,  and  at  the 
end  of  the  game  everyone  who  had  not  cheated  told 
his  opponent  so,  who  then  kindly  accepted  his  word. 
Claude  would  find,  however,  that  among  the  sort  of 
people  he  now  moved,  it  wasn't  correct  to  cheat;  in  fact, 
it  was  distinctly  advisable  not  to.  Indeed,  in  a  very 
few  minutes,  Jim  felt  rather  as  if  Claude  had  cheated, 
and  he  was  himself  kind  but  a  little  troubled  about  it. 

Then  —  he  felt  almost  ashamed  of  himself  for  dwelling 
so  long  on  so  small  an  incident  —  he  looked  at  the  matter 
afresh.  He  had  cheated,  and  pocketed  a  sovereign 
probably  in  consequence.  That  was  a  very  small 
sum  of  money  to  cheat  for,  but  he  distinctly  wished 
that  it  had  not  occurred.  And  then  he  threw  down 
again  the  mallet  he  had  taken  up. 

"Fact  is,  I'm  a  rotten  chap,"  he  said  to  himself,  and 
there  was  no  dissentient  voice  in  his  brain. 

Claude  meantime  had  gone  down  to  the  lake  after 
Dora.  If  he  had  been  obliged  to  give  his  thoughts 


THEOSBORNES  107 

the  definiteness  of  words,  he  would  certainly  have  said 
that  he  thought  the  whole  thing  rather  odd,  but  then, 
being  of  an  extremely  loyal,  unsuspicious  nature,  he 
would  have  endorsed  his  remark  to  Jim,  that  his  word 
was  quite  sufficient,  and  have  turned  his  thoughts 
resolutely  elsewhere.  He  did  not  want  to  think  about 
such  very  nasty  little  things  as  cheating  at  croquet, 
whether  there  was  a  penny  or  a  sovereign  or  nothing 
at  all  on  the  game,  and  he  did  not  wish  to  examine  a 
certain  doubt  that  lurked  in  the  bottom  of  his  mind 
as  to  whether  Dora  had  seen  correctly  or  not.  It  was 
in  the  shade  anyhow,  and  he  let  it  lie  there.  But  if 
anyone  had  told  him  (or  Jim  either)  that  the  incident 
was  a  trifling  and  microscopic  one,  both  would  have 
been  quite  right  to  deny  that.  It  was  true  that  a  game 
only  and  a  sovereign  were  concerned,  but  the  "directing" 
power  no  less  important  a  personage  than  Honour.  It 
really  makes  a  great  difference  in  the  daily  journey 
through  life  if  that  charioteer  is  at  his  post  or  not. 

" Sorry  for  keeping  you,  darling,"  he  said  to  Dora,  "but 
we  had  to  finish  the  game.  It  didn't  take  long,  did  it? 
I  got  my  head  knocked  off." 

Dora  had  already  established  herself,  and  he  pushed 
out  through  the  shallow  water,  where  the  weeds  trailed 
whispering  fingers  against  the  bottom  of  the  boat,  to 
deeper  water. 

"How  clever  of  you  to  screw  it  on  again  so  quick," 
said  she.  "Yes,  it's  quite  straight.  Oh,  Claude,  I've 
been  thinking  such  a  lot  since  I  left  you.  How  funny 
it  is  how  little  tiny  things,  like  Jim's  cheating  just  now, 
suggest  such  a  lot  of  other  ones  not  at  all  tiny." 


io8  THEOSBORNES 

Claude  gave  a  little  short  uncomfortable  laugh. 

"I  say,  darling,  do  you  know,"  he  said,  "if  I  were 
you  I  shouldn't  say  that  sort  of  thing  even  to  me.  He 
didn't  cheat:  he  told  me  so.  So  you  must  have  been 
mistaken,  and  it's  an  awful  pity  to  let  things  like  that 
ever  be  talked  about.  But  let's  go  on  to  the  big  things 
which  it  (though  it  didn't  happen)  suggested." 

Dora  paid  no  attention  whatever  to  these  excellent 
moral  reflections,  but  merely  waited  with  her  mouth 
open  till  he  had  finished  in  order  to  speak  again. 

"Oh,  but  he  did,  he  did,"  she  cried.  "I  saw  him  with 
both  eyes.  We  never  could  play  together  because  he 
always  cheated  and  I  always  lost  my  temper.  How 
funny  of  him  not  to  confess." 

Claude  did  not  reply  for  the  moment:  it  was  all  rather 
uncomfortable. 

"Well,  now  for  the  big  things,"  he  said. 

"Oh,  bother  the  big  things,"  said  Dora.  "I  know 
you  think  I  am  wrong,  and  I'm  not.  I'm  never  wrong. 
I'm  perfectly  certain." 

She  stopped  suddenly  and  leaned  over  the  side  of 
the  boat,  dabbling  her  hand  in  the  water.  She  saw 
some  unuttered  trouble  in  Claude's  face,  and  a  rather 
dreadful  conjecture  occurred  to  her. 

"Claude,  you  weren't  playing  for  money,  were  you?" 
she  asked  in  a  low  voice. 

He  made  up  his  mind  in  a  moment  and  acted  wTith 
promptitude. 

"Good  gracious,  no,"  he  sgid.  "What  will  you  be 
suggesting  next?" 

But  Dora  was  still  grave. 


THEOSBORNES  109 

"Oh,  I  am  glad,"  she  said,  with  relief.  "And  do 
let's  talk  about  something  else.  I  daresay  I  was  quite 
wrong  about  Jim  moving  that  ball.  Oh,  I  know  I 
wasn't,"  she  cried.  "It  was  only  a  game,  you  see, 
and  there  was  nothing  on  it,  and  oh,  poor  Jim,  you  see 
he  always  used  to  cheat.  It  was  just  the  same  at 
billiards;  if  the  balls  were  touching  he  used  to  go  on 
before  he  really  looked  to  see  if  they  were.  And  that 
leads  on  to  the  big  things." 

He  had  stopped  rowing,  and  with  the  impetus  which 
the  boat  had  acquired  in  those  vigorous  strokes  he  made 
to  get  clear  of  the  weeds,  they  were  drifting  toward 
the  little  island  in  the  centre  of  the  lake,  where  the  swans 
made  their  nests.  It  was  rimmed  about  with  soft- 
branched  willows  that  trailed  yielding  boughs  toward 
the  water,  and  the  boat  glided  in  under  their  drooping 
fingers,  and  ran  on  to  a  soft  sandy  promontory,  where 
it  beached  its  bows,  while  the  enfolding  willow  gave 
shade. 

"Yes,  the  big  things,"  said  Dora.  "It's  just  this, 
darling.  You've  got  heaps  of  attractions,  but  I'm 
not  sure  that  one  of  your  nicest  things  isn't  that  you 
are  so  safe.  It  is  such  fun  being  able  to  trust  a  person 
quite  completely  and  entirely  and  know  one  was  right 
in  doing  so.  I  don't  believe  you  ever  scheme  or  make 
plans.  Mother  does,  and  Jim  does,  and  people  get  so 
keen  on  their  plan  that  other  things  get  rather  out  of 
focus.  They  go — oh,  it's  like  hounds  when  they  are 
really  running  well:  they  don't  look  at  the  scenery, 
you  know.  They  put  their  dear  noses  down  and  follow, 
follow.  And  it's  all  because  of  money  —  no,  not  the 


no  THEOSBORNES 

hounds,  don't  be  so  foolish  —  but  it  is  an  advantage 
not  to  want  to  bother  about  money.  I  do  like  to  know 
that  I  needn't  bother  any  more  at  all,  and  that  if  I  want 
to  take  a  cab  I  can.  Somebody  —  Pierre  Loti,  I  think 
—  said  it  must  be  exquisite  to  be  poor.  Well,  it  isn't. 
It's  far  more  exquisite  to  be  rich.  Of  course  I  had 
great  fun  about  trimming  a  hat  for  twopence,  and  making 
it  look  as  if  it  came  from  May's  shop  —  Biondonetti, 
isn't  it,  but  really  I  should  much  prefer  to  order  hats 
direct.  Wouldn't  you?" 

Claude  happened  to  be  hatless,  but  he  passed  his 
hand  over  his  head  instead,  as  if  to  recapture  the  sensation 
of  ordering  hats.  "I  suppose  I  order  mine,"  he  said. 
"I'm  sure  I  never  made  one.  I  shouldn't  know  how 
to  set  about  it." 

"No,  darling,  you  don't  wear  two  feathers  —  and  — 
nothing  else.  A  hat  of  two  feathers  is  fearfully  smart." 

"Are  these  the  big  things  you  proposed  to  talk  about?" 
asked  Claude. 

"No,  as  if  hats  mattered.  Oh,  Claude,  you're 
moulting.  A  short  black  hair!  And  there's  another 
sticking  out.  May  I  pull?" 

He  bent  his  head  a  little  down:  she  pulled,  and  he 
screamed.  The  hair  remained  where  it  was. 

"And  is  that  a  big  thing?"  asked  he  again. 

"No,  donkey;  darling  donkey.  You  will  interrupt 
so  about  hats.  As  if  anybody  cared  where  you  got 
your  hats,  and  you  haven't  got  one.  How  did  you 
lead  the  conversation  round  to  hats?  Let's  see,  it  was 
Austell  first,  and  then  .  .  .  then,  oh,  yes,  I  said  you 
were  safe.  And  now  I  think  I'll  go  on.  You  may 


THE    OSBORNES  in 

sit  down  here,  if  you  like.  There's  room  for  us  both. 
Let's  be  common,  as  May  said  about  —  about  people 
like  us,  the  other  day.  I  would  change  hats  with  you, 
if  you  had  one.  As  it  is " 

Dora  pulled  the  thick  black  curls. 

"Oh,  I  wish  you  had  a  wig,"  she  said,  "and  nobody 
knew  but  me.  I  shouldn't  mind,  and  everybody  would 
say  what  beautiful  hair  you  had,  and  I  should  know 
it  wasn't  real,  and  shouldn't  tell.  It  would  be  such 
fun.  Then  some  day  you  would  annoy  me,  and  I 
should  tell  everybody  it  was  only  a  wig.  Claude,  when 
I  am  old  and  wrinkly  and  quite,  quite  ugly,  do  you 
suppose  you  will  care  the  least  little  bit  any  more  for 
me?  Oh,  dear,  I  felt  so  extraordinarily  gay  all  the 
morning,  and  now  I've  gone  sad  all  in  a  minute!  Oh, 
do  comfort  me!  There  is  such  a  lot  of  gray-business 
in  life,  unless  one  dies  quite  young,  which  it  would 
immensely  annoy  me  to  do.  I  wonder  how  we  shall 
stand  the  gray-business,  you  and  I,  when  we  see  each 
other  getting  older  and  more  wrinkled  and  stiffer,  stiffer 
not  only  in  limb,  and  that  is  bad  enough,  but  stiffer  in 
mind,  which  is  infinitely  worse.  No,  don't  look  at  me 
like  that,  but  sit  up  and  be  sensible.  It  has  got  to  be 
faced." 

Unconsciously,  or  at  the  most  half  consciously,  she 
was  sounding  him;  she  knew  quite  well  that  there  were 
beautiful  things  to  be  said  and  said  truly  about  what 
she  had  called  the  gray -business  of  life,  and  she  wondered, 
longing  that  it  might  be  so,  whether  there  was  within 
him  that  divine  alchemy  which  could  see  how  the  gray 
could  be  changed  into  gold.  Never  had  she  felt  his 


ii2  THE    OSBORNES 

physical  charm  so  potent  as  now,  when  he  sat  up  obedient 
to  her  orders  and  leaned  forward  toward  her,  with 
a  look,  a  little  puzzled,  a  little  baffled  in  his  eyes.  Almost 
she  was  tempted  to  say  to  him,  "Oh,  it  doesn't  matter, 
nothing  matters  beside  this  exquisite  day  and  you,  you, 
as  I  know  you  already,"  but  some  very  deep-lying  vein 
of  curiosity  wholly  feminine,  and  very  largely  loving, 
made  her  not  interrupt  her  own  question,  but  wait,  with 
just  a  touch  of  anxiety,  for  his  reply.  She  and  Claude, 
she  felt,  would  have  some  day  to  be  far  more  intimately 
known  by  each  other  than  they  were  now.  Of  him  she 
knew  little  but  his  personal  beauty,  though  she  felt  sure 
that,  as  she  had  said  to  May,  he  was  good,  and  as  she 
had  said  to  him,  that  he  was  safe.  And  of  her  she 
guessed  that  he  knew  no  more;  that  he  loved  her  she 
had  no  doubt,  but  she  felt  that  she  had  shown  him  as 
yet  but  little  beyond  that  which  all  the  world  saw,  her 
quick  and  eager  attitude  toward  life,  the  iridescent 
moods  of  her  effervescent  nature.  There  was  some- 
thing that  sat  below  these,  her  real  self.  She  wanted 
Claude  to  know  that,  even  as  she  wanted  to  know  his 
real  self. 

This  was  all  vague  to  her  though  real,  instinctive 
rather  than  describable,  and  flashed  but  momentarily 
through  her  mind  as  she  waited  for  his  reply.  But 
that  reply  came  at  once:  Claude  seemed  to  find  no 
difficulty  about  the  facing  of  the  gray-business. 

''There's  no  cause  to  worry,"  he  said.  "Just  look 
at  Dad  and  the  mater!  Isn't  he  in  love  with  her  still? 
And  I  expect  what  you  call  the  gray-business  for  a 
woman  cannot  begin  while  her  husband  loves  her.  I 


THEOSBORNES  113 

don't  suppose  either  of  them  ever  gave  a  look,  so  to 
say,  at  anybody  else.  Think  of  the  way  he  proposed  her 
health  last  night!  Not  much  gray-business  about  that! 
Why  it  was  as  if  she  was  his  best  girl  still,  and  that  he'd 
just  come  a-courting  her,  instead  of  their  having  been 
married  over  thirty  years.  And  she  is  his  best  girl 
still,  just  as  you  will  ever  be  mine.  And  as  for  her, 
why  he's  her  man  still.  How's  that  for  the  gray- 
business?" 

Dora  felt  one  dreadful  moment's  inclination  to  laugh. 
She  had  asked  for  a  sign  that  he  could  turn  the  gray 
into  gold,  and  for  reply  she  got  the  assurance  that  she 
might  put  her  mind  at  rest  with  the  thought  of  what 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Osborne  were  to  each  other!  She  knew 
that  for  that  moment  she  only  saw  the  ludicrous  side 
of  it,  and  that  a  very  real  and  solid  truth  was  firm  below 
it,  but  somehow  it  was  not  what  she  wanted.  She 
wanted  .  .  .  she  hardly  knew  what,  but  something 
of  the  spirit  of  romance  that  triumphantly  refuses  to 
acquiesce  in  the  literal  facts  of  life,  and  see  all  things 
through  the  many-coloured  blaze  of  its  own  light.  She 
wanted  the  gray-business  laughed  at,  she  wanted  the 
assurance  that  she  could  never  grow  old,  given  with 
a  lover's  superb  conviction,  to  be  received  with  the 
unquestioning  credulity  of  a  child.  No  doubt  it  ought 
to  have  been  very  comforting  to  think  that  the  years 
would  leave  with  them  the  very  warm  and  comfortable 
affection  which  the  father  and  mother  had  for  each 
other,  and  she  ought  to  be  glad  that  Claude  felt  so  sure 
of  that.  But,  to  her  mind,  there  was  about  as  much 
romance  in  it  as  in  a  suet  pudding. 


ii4  THEOSBORNES 

He  saw  the  eagerness  die  from  her  face,  and  the  shadow 
of  her  disappointment  cross  it. 

"And  what  is  it  now,  dear?"  he  asked. 

Dora  tossed  her  head  back,  a  trick  she  had  caught 
from  him. 

"It  isn't  anything  now,"  she  said,  "it  all  concerns 
years  that  are  centuries  away.  I  think  it  was  foolish 
of  me  to  ask  at  all." 

"I  don't  think  it  was  in  the  least,"  said  he.  "You 
said  it  had  to  be  faced,  and  I  think  I've  given  it  a  facer, 
at  least  the  example  of  the  governor  and  the  mater  has. 
Besides,  there  are  other  things  that  will  colour  up  the 
gray-matter,  children,  we  hope,  sons  going  to  school 
and  daughters  growing  up." 

Again  Dora  knew  that  he  spoke  with  excellent  sense, 
but  again  she  felt  that  it  was  not  sense  she  wanted,  so 
much  as  lovers'  nonsense,  which  is  more  essentially 
real  than  any  sense.  She  wanted  something  airy, 
romantic,  golden.  .  .  .  And  then  she  looked  at  him 
again,  and  her  wants  faded  from  her.  He  brought 
her  himself.  She  gave  a  little  sigh  and  raised  herself 
till  her  face  was  on  a  level  with  his. 

"O  Claude,  I  should  be  a  donkey,  if  I  was  not 
content,"  she  said. 

"Lord,  there'd  be  a  pair  of  us  then,  if  I  wasn't," 
said  he. 

Sunday  succeeded  and  breakfast  in  consequence 
was  put  an  hour  earlier  so  that  any  servant  in  the 
house  could  go  to  church.  Mr.  Osborne  himself,  though 
the  day  was  already  of  scorching  heat,  came  down 


THEOSBORNES  115 

in  a  black  frock  -  coat  suit  of  broadcloth,  and  his 
wife  rustled  in  black  satin.  It  was  clearly  expected 
that  all  their  guests  would  go  also,  for  at  half-past  ten 
a  stream  of  vehicles  drove  to  the  door  past  the  window 
of  the  smoking-room. 

"Got  to  start  early,"  said  he,  "so  that  the  men  may 
put  up  the  cattle  and  come  too,  but  there's  no  call  for 
you  gentlemen  to  put  out  your  cigars.  The  ladies 
won't  mind  a  whiff  of  tobacco  in  the  open  air,  Sir  Thomas, 
and  the  church  is  but  a  step  outside  the  Park  gates, 
so  that  you  can  sit  and  finish  there.  There  are  the 
ladies  assembling.  Time  to  go:  never  keep  the  fair 
sex  waiting,  hey?  or  else  the  most  indulgent  of  them 
will  turn  a  cold  shoulder." 

The  church,  as  Mr.  Osborne  had  said,  was  but  a 
stone's  throw  beyond  the  Park  gates,  and  as  they  all 
arrived  at  twenty  minutes  to  eleven  there  was  time, 
before  the  groaning  of  the  organ  summoned  them  in, 
to  have  a  turn  under  the  trees  and  finish  the  cigars 
that  had  barely  been  begun. 

It  had  been  so  taken  for  granted  that  everybody  was 
coming  to  church  that  out  of  all  the  party  there  was 
only  one  absentee,  namely,  Austell,  to  whose  room 
Mr.  Osborne  had  sent  with  inquiries  if  he  was  ready, 
and  the  suggestion  to  send  back  the  motor  for  him  if 
he  was  not.  But  he  certainly  was  not  ready  and  the 
motor  had  not  gone  back  for  him,  since  he  had  said 
that  he  was  not  very  well.  Otherwise  the  whole  of 
the  party  were  there,  and  by  degrees  strayed  into  church. 
Mrs.  Osborne  had  gone  there  at  once  from  the  carriage 
with  Lady  Austell,  in  order  to  escape  from  the  heat, 


n6  THE    OSBORNES 

and  they  were  already  seated  in  the  big  square  family 
pew  which  belonged  to  the  house,  when  the  others  began 
to  come  in.  Sir  Thomas  and  Mr.  Osborne  were  the 
last,  because  they  had  been  discussing  the  recent  rise 
in  the  price  of  tin  up  till  the  last  moment.  They  entered, 
indeed,  so  shortly  before  the  procession  of  four  choir 
boys,  two  men  and  the  vicar,  that  Mr.  Osborne  had 
barely  time  to  sit  down  by  his  wife  in  the  place  she  always 
kept  for  him  next  her  in  church,  after  standing  up  and 
putting  his  face  in  his  hat,  before  he  had  to  stand  up 
again.  Sir  Thomas  sat  next  Lady  Austell.  The  two 
looked  rather  like  a  codfish  in  conjunction  with  a  withered 

my. 

The  pew  was  four-sided,  the  fourth  side  opening 
into  the  body  of  the  church  through  the  easternmost 
of  the  arches  of  the  south  aisle.  In  the  centre  of  it  was 
a  very  beautiful  alabaster  monument  to  the  first  earl 
and  his  wife,  while  the  window  was  of  exquisite  early 
German  glass  to  the  memory  of  the  second.  Elsewhere 
in  numbers  round  the  walls  were  other  smaller  tablets, 
some  bearing  medallions,  others  merely  catalogues  of 
the  cardinal  virtues  with  which  the  deceased  were  blessed, 
but  the  whole  place  was  historical,  established.  And 
here  this  morning  sat  Mr.  Osborne  and  his  family  and 
friends,  among  whom  were  Lady  Austell  and  her  daughter, 
who  was  going  to  join  together  the  two  families.  She 
sat  just  opposite  Claude,  and  of  them  all,  he  alone  to 
the  most  observant  eye  was  ambiguous.  He  might 
as  well,  so  far  as  appearance  went,  have  been  of  the 
Austells  as  of  the  Osbornes. 

Dora,  it  was  to  be  feared,  was  not  very  attentive,  and 


THE    OSBORNES  117 

her  face  wore  that  peculiarly  rapt  look,  which,  as  May 
Thurston  had  once  told  her,  was  a  certain  indication 
that  she  was  not  thinking  about  what  was  going  on. 
As  far  as  the  service  of  the  church  went  that  was  true; 
she  was  completely  occupied  with  the  occupants  of  the 
pew.  The  sermon  was  in  progress  and  her  mother 
sat  with  eyes  mournfully  fixed  on  the  Elizabethan  mon- 
ument in  the  centre,  just  as  if  the  first  earl  had  been 
her  husband,  while  next  her  Sir  Thomas  had  his  eyes 
fixed  on  nothing  at  all,  for  they  were  tightly  closed.  His 
wife,  next  to  him,  and  round  the  corner,  made  futile 
little  attempts  to  rouse  him  to  consciousness  again,  by 
pretending  to  put  her  parasol  in  a  more  convenient 
place,  so  that  it  should  incidentally  hit  his  foot.  This, 
eventually,  she  succeeded  in  doing,  and  he  opened  one 
eye  and  rolled  it  drowsily  and  reproachfully  at  Lady 
Austell,  as  if  she  had  interrupted  some  celestial  reverie. 
Then  he  closed  it  again. 

Claude,  as  Dora  felt,  had  observed  this,  and  was 
looking  at  her,  so  she  passed  over  him,  for  fear  of  catching 
his  eye,  and  went  on  to  Uncle  Alfred,  who  sat  next  him. 
He  was  closely  wrapped  up  in  a  shawl  that  went  over 
his  shoulders,  and  a  certain  stealthy  movement  of  his 
lower  jaw  caused  her  to  suspect  that  he  was  eating  some 
sort  of  lozenge.  Then  came  Mrs.  Osborne:  Dora 
could  hear  her  rather  tight  satin  bodice  creak  to  her 
breathing.  She  had  the  Bible  in  which  she  had  veri- 
fied the  text  open  in  her  lap,  and  she  was  listening 
intently  to  the  sermon,  which  was  clearly  to  her 
mind,  for  her  plump,  pleasant  face  was  smiling,  and 
her  eyes  fixed  on  the  preacher  were  a  little  dim:  her 


n8  THE    OSBORNES 

smile  was  clearly  one  of  those  smiles  of  very  simple 
happiness  which  are  allied  to  tenderness  and  tears.  And 
then  Dora  focussed  her  ear  and  heard  what  was  being  said : 

"So  this  earthly  love  of  ours,"  said  the  preacher, 
"is  of  the  same  immortal  quality.  Years  do  not  dim  it; 
it  seems  but  to  grow  stronger  and  brighter  as  the  mere 
purely  physical  part  of  it " 

And  then  Dora's  eye  was  focussed  again  by  a  move- 
ment on  the  part  of  Mrs.  Osborne,  and  her  ear  lost  the 
rest  of  the  sentence.  Mrs.  Osborne  gave  a  great  sigh 
and  her  dress  a  great  creak,  and  simultaneously  she 
took  away  the  hand  that  was  supporting  the  Bible  in 
which  she  had  verified  the  text,  so  that  it  slid  off  the 
short  and  steeply  inclined  plane  between  her  body  and 
her  knee,  and  fell  face  downward  on  the  floor.  She 
did  not  heed  this:  she  laid  her  hand,  making  kaleido- 
scopic colours  in  her  rings  as  she  moved  it,  on  the  hand 
of  her  husband,  who  sat  next  her. 

He,  too,  had  been  following  the  sermon  with  evident 
pleasure,  and  it  was  hard  to  say  to  which  of  them  the 
movement  came  first.  For  within  the  same  fraction  of 
a  second  his  hand  also  let  fall  the  silk  hat  which  he  had 
already  gathered  up  in  anticipation  of  the  conclusion, 
and  in  the  same  instant  of  time  it  was  seeking  hers.  His 
head  turned  also  to  her,  as  hers  to  him,  and  a  whispered 
word  passed  between  them.  Then  they  smiled,  each 
to  the  other,  and  the  second  whisper  was  audible  right 
across  the  monument  of  Francis,  first  earl,  to  Dora, 
where  she  sat  opposite  to  them. 

"Maria,  my  dear,"  whispered  Mr.  Osborne,  "if 
that  isn't  nice!" 


THE    OSBORNES  119 

Then  Mrs.  Osborne's  belated  consciousness  awoke; 
she  withdrew  her  hand  and  picked  up  her  Bible. 

Mr.  Osborne's  instinct  in  taking  up  his  hat  had  been 
quite  correct;  the  doxology  followed,  and  a  hymn  was 
given  out.  He  and  his  wife,  so  it  was  clear  to  Dora, 
had  no  consciousness  except  for  each  other  and  the  hymn. 
She  was  the  first  to  find  it  in  her  hymn-book,  while  he 
still  fumbled  with  his  glasses,  and  when  they  all  stood 
up  he  shared  the  book  with  her  and  put  down  his  own. 

Then  the  organ  indicated  the  first  lines  of  the  tune, 
and  again  the  two  smiled  at  each  other,  for  it  was  a 
favourite,  as  it  had  been  sung  at  the  service  for  the  dedi- 
cation of  the  church  in  Sheffield.  They  both  remembered 
that,  but  that  did  not  wholly  account  for  their  pleasure: 
it  had  been  a  favourite  long  before. 

Mrs.  Osborne  sang  what  is  commonly  called  "second." 
That  is  to  say,  she  made  sounds  about  a  third  below 
the  air.  Mr.  Osborne  sang  bass :  that  is  to  say,  he  sang 
the  air  an  octave  or  thereabouts  below  the  treble.  They 
both  sang  very  loudly;  so  also  did  Percy,  so  also  did 
Mrs.  Per,  who  sang  a  real  alto. 

And  then  without  reason  Dora's  eyes  grew  suddenly 
dim.  In  the  last  verse  Mrs.  Osborne  closed  the  large 
gilt-edged  hymn-book  with  tunes,  and  looked  at  her 
husband.  He  moistened  his  lips  as  the  last  verse  began, 
and  coughed  once.  Then  Mrs.  Osborne's  rings  again 
caught  the  light  as  she  sought  her  husband's  hand. 
And  she  started  fortissimo,  a  shade  before  anybody  else : 

"And  so  through  all  the  length  of  days — " 

Mr.  Osborne  did  not  sing:  his  fat  fingers  closed  on 
his  wife's  rings,  and  he  listened  to  her.  He  would  not 


120  THEOSBORNES 

have  listened  then  to  Melba.  He  would  not  have 
been  so  completely  absorbed  if  the  seraphim  had 
sung  to  him. 

And  then  finally  Dora  looked  at  Claude.  She 
thought  she  understood  a  little  more.  But  she  only  saw 
a  little  more. 


CHAPTER  V. 

IT  WAS  about  two  of  the  afternoon  in  the  last  week 
of  May,  and  this  sudden  heat  wave  which  had 
spread  southward  over  Europe  had  reached  Venice, 
making  it  more  than  ever  a  place  to  dream  and  be  still 
in  and  less  than  ever  a  place  to  see  sights  in.  So  at  any 
rate  thought  its  foreign  visitors,  for  the  Grand  Canal  even 
and  the  more  populous  of  the  waterways  were  empty  of 
pleasure-seeking  and  church-inspecting  traffic,  and  but 
little  even  of  the  mercantile  or  more  necessary  sort  was 
on  the  move.  Here  and  there  a  barge  laden  with  coke 
and  wood  fuel  was  being  punted  heavily  upstream, 
clinging  as  far  as  might  be  to  the  side  of  the  canal,  where 
it  would  feel  less  of  the  tide  that  was  strongly  setting 
seaward,  or  here  another  carrying  the  stacked-up  furniture 
of  some  migratory  household  passed  down  midstream 
so  as  to  get  the  full  aid  and  current  of  the  tide  avoided  by 
the  other.  But  apart. from  such  traffic  and  the  passage 
of  the  gray  half-empty  steamers  that  churned  and  troubled 
the  water  at  regular  intervals,  sending  the  wash  of  their 
slanting  waves  against  the  walls  of  the  white  palaces, 
and  making  the  moored  and  untenanted  gondolas  slap 
the  water  with  sudden  hollow  complaints,  and  grind 
their  sides  uneasily  against  the  restraining  pali,  there 
was  but  little  stir  of  movement  or  passage.  No  lounger 
hung  about  on  the  steps  of  the  iron  bridge,  and  the  sellers 
of  fruit,  picture  postcards,  and  tobacco  had  taken  their 


122  THEOSBORNES 

wares  into  the  narrow  strip  of  shade  to  the  north  of  the 
Accademia,  and  waited,  unexpectant  of  business,  till  the 
cool  of  the  later  hours  should  bring  the  forestieri  into  the 
street  again. 

Even  the  native  population  shunned  the  glare  of  'the 
sun,  and  preferred,  if  it  was  necessary  to  go  from  one 
place  to  another,  to  seek  the  deep  shadows  of  the  narrow 
footways  rather  than  face  the  heat  and  glare  of  the  canals, 
and  the  boatmen  in  charge  of  the  public  ferries  had 
moored  their  craft  in  the  shade  if  possible,  or,  with  heads 
sheltered  beneath  their  discarded  coats,  passed  the  long 
siesta-hour  with  but  little  fear  of  interruption  or  call 
on  their  services.  The  domes  and  towers  of  the  town 
glittered  jewel-like  against  the  deep  blue  of  the  sky, 
and  their  outlines  trembled  in  the  quiver  of  the  reverberat- 
ing air.  On  the  north  side  of  the  Grand  Canal  the 
southward-facing  houses  dozed  behind  lattices  closed  to 
keep  out  the  glare  and  the  heat,  and  the  air  was  still  and 
noiseless  but  for  the  staccato  chiding  of  the  swallows 
which  pursued  their  swift  and  curving  ways  with  nothing 
of  their  speed  abated.  Over  the  horizon  hung  a  purplish 
haze  of  heat,  so  that  the  edge  of  the  sea  melted  indis- 
tinguishably  into  the  sky,  and  Alps  and  Euganean  hills 
alike  were  invisible. 

Dora  had  lunched  alone  to-day,  for  Claude  had  gone 
to  Milan  to  meet  his  father  and  mother,  who  were  coming 
out  for  a  fortnight  and  would  arrive  this  evening;  and 
at  the  present  moment  she  was  looking  out  from  the 
window  of  her  sola  on  to  the  lower  stretch  of  the  Grand 
Canal,  which,  as  her  intimacy  with  it  deepened,  seemed 
ever  to  grow  more  inexplicably  beautiful.  The  flat 


THEOSBORNES  123 

which  they  occupied  was  on  the  south  side  of  the  canal, 
and  though  no  doubt  it  would  have  left  the  room  cooler 
to  have  closed  all  inlet  of  the  baked  air,  she  preferred 
to  have  the  windows  open,  and  lean  out  to  command  a 
larger  view  of  the  beloved  waterway.  Deep  into  her 
heart  had  the  magic  of  the  city  of  waters  entered,  a  thing 
incomparable  and  incommunicable.  She  only  knew 
that  when  she  was  away  from  Venice  the  thought  of  it 
caused  her  to  draw  long  breaths,  which  hung  fluttering 
in  her  throat ;  that  when  she  was  in  it  her  eyes  were  never 
satisfied  with  gazing  or  herself  with  being  soaked  in  it. 
She  loved  what  was  splendid  in  it,  and  what  was  sordid, 
what  was  small  and  what  was  great,  its  sunshine,  its 
shadows,  its  moonlight,  the  pleasant  Italian  folk,  and 
whether  she  sat  in  the  jewelled  gloom  of  St.  Mark's  or 
shot  out  with  the  call  of  her  gondolier  from  some  dark 
waterway  into  the  blaze  of  ivory  moonlight  on  the  Grand 
Canal  below  the  Rialto,  or  whether  the  odour  of  roasting 
coffee  or  the  frying  of  fish  came  to  her  as  she  passed  some 
little  caffe  ristorante  in  the  maze  of  mean  streets  that 
lie  off  the  Merceria,  or  whether  she  lay  floating  at  ease 
in  the  warm  sustaining  water  of  the  Lido,  or  watched  in 
the  church  of  St.  Georgio  the  mystic  wreaths  of  spirits 
and  archangels  assembled  round  the  table  of  the  Last 
Supper,  peopling  the  beamed  ceiling  of  the  Upper  Cham- 
ber and  mingling  mistlike  in  the  smoke  of  the  lamp  with 
which  it  was  lit  —  she  knew  that  it  was  Venice,  the 
fact  of  Venice,  that  lay  like  a  gold  thread  through  these 
magical  hours,  binding  them  together,  a  circle  of  perfect 
pearls. 
Two  threads  indeed  ran  through  them  all:  they  were 


124  THEOSBORNES 

doubly  strong,  for  it  was  in  Venice  last  autumn  that  she 
and  Claude  had  passed  three  weeks  of  honeymoon  and 
with  the  glory  of  the  place  was  mingled  the  glory  of  her 
lover.  It  was  that  perhaps  that  gave  to  details  and  such 
sights  and  sounds  as  were  not  remarkable  in  themselves 
their  ineffaceable  character.  It  was  because  she  and 
Claude  had  wandered,  pleased  to  find  themselves  momen- 
tarily lost,  in  the  high-eaved  labyrinths  of  narrow  streets, 
that  the  dingy  little  interiors,  the  trattorias  with  their 
smell  of  spilt  wine,  and  their  vine-leaf-stoppered  bottles, 
their  sharp  savour  of  cooking  and  sawdust-sprinkled 
floors  were  things  apart  from  anything  that  could  be 
seen  or  perceived  in  any  other  town  in  the  world.  A 
spire  of  valerian  sprouted  from  mouldering  brickwork, 
the  reflection  of  a  marble  lion's  head  on  snow-white 
cornice  quivered  in  the  gray-green  water  below,  little 
sideway-scuttling  crabs  bustled  over  the  gray  mud  of 
the  lagoons,  bent  on  private  and  oblique  errands  of  their 
own,  seagulls  hovered  at  the  edge  of  the  retiring  water; 
gray-stemmed  pali  with  black  heads  leaned  together, 
marking  the  devious  course  of  deep-dug  channels;  there 
came  a  cry  of  ".S/a/^'and  a  gondola  with  high-arching  neck 
(some  beautiful  black  swan)  shot  out  of  a  canal  by  the 
bridge  where  they  lingered,  and  these  sights  and  sounds, 
trivial  in  themselves,  were  stamped  in  her  mind  with 
the  royal  mint-mark  that  belonged  to  those  weeks  when 
she  and  Claude  were  in  Venice  after  their  marriage.  Her 
emotion  had  streamed  from  her,  soaking  them  with 
it:  they  were  part  of  Venice,  part  of  herself,  and  so 
wholly  hers. 
Some  seal  had  been  set  on  those  things  then  that  could 


THE    OSBORNES  125 

never  be  melted  out.  It  was  Claude  who  had  set  it 
there,  and  he  had  so  imprinted  that  seal  upon  Venice 
that  to  her  now  all  that  was  Venice  had  the  memory  of 
her  honeymoon  upon  it  like  a  hallmark  on  silver.  That 
time  had  been  a  score  of  divine  days,  luminous  with  the 
southern  sun,  warm  with  stillness  or  clement  wind,  and 
yet  made  vigorous  with  the  youth  and  freshness  of  the 
immortal  sea.  And  here,  six  months  afterward,  she 
had  returned  with  Claude  to  spend  a  month  of  late  May 
and  early  June  before  the  weeks  of  London.  In  the 
autumn  she  had  come  home  under  the  enchantment 
and  by  way  of  a  neat  Christmas  present  Mr.  Osborne 
had  prospectively  given  her  the  rent,  the  journey,  the 
expenses  of  food  and  wine,  the  servants  and  their  journeys 
and  their  wages  of  a  month,  "or  call  it  five  weeks,  my 
dear,  and  you  won't  find  me  pulling  you  up  short,"  he  had 
said,  "of  that  house  on  the  Grand  Canal  that  took  your 

fancy,  Palazzo but  there,  I've  no  head  for  foreign 

names.  You  leave  London,  you  do,  with  your  maid  and 
your  cook,  and  your  housemaid  and  what  not,  and  don't 
forget  Claude,  hey  ?  or  he'll  be  quarrelling  with  you,  and 
me  taking  his  side  too,  though  its  only  my  fun.  And 
you  take  a  few  English  servants  with  you,  as  you  can 
fall  back  upon,  and  you  send  me  in  a  bill  for  all  the  tickets 
and  the  wages,  and  your  living  bills,  and  your  gondolas, 
and  that's  my  Christmas  present  to  you.  Don't  you 
bother,  but  make  yourself  comfortable.  You  go  as  you 
please,  as  we  used  to  say,  for  a  month,  or  call  it  five  weeks, 
and  enjoy  yourself,  and  let  me  know  how  much  it's  all 
stood  you  in.  I  shouldn't  wonder  if  Mrs.  O.  and  I  didn't 
come  and  join  you,  oh,  not  to  make  you  uncomfortable, 


126  THE    OSBORNES 

no  fear,  but  to  take  another  piazza,  ah,  palazzo  you 
call  it,  and  have  a  look  at  the  Italians,  and  see  what's 
to  be  seen." 

Dora  had  an  excellent  aural  memory,  and  as  she  sat 
at  her  window  to-day,  watching  the  flickering  reflection 
in  the  water  of  the  sunstruck  houses  opposite,  she  could 
almost  hear  Mr.  Osborne's  voice  saying  these  hospitable 
and  free-handed  things.  But  they  did  not  get  between 
her  and  her  memory  of  the  weeks  in  October.  She  was 
aware  that  during  the  last  six  months  she  had  seen  things 
differently  to  the  way  in  which  they  were  presented  to 
her  during  those  weeks,  but  it  was  not  Venice  that  had 
altered.  It  was  still  Venice  "as  per  last  October,"  as 
her  father-in-law  might  have  said. 

They  had  rowed  out  to  Malamocco  one  day,  and 
another  they  had  gone  to  Torcello,  the  ancient  mother 
of  Venice,  and  she  had  found  there  a  sort  of  tenderness 
for  the  earlier  and  now  ruined  and  fevered  town,  just  as 
—  just  as  she  found  a  tenderness  for  her  husband's 
mother.  Torcello  was  the  beginning  of  the  magic,  from 
Torcello  the  creation  of  what  she  so  loved  had  come. 
On  another  day  they  had  taken  dinner  out  on  to  the  great 
lagoon,  had  tied  up  to  a  clump  of  hoary  gray-headed 
pali,  notching  the  ferro  of  their  gondola  into  the  disc 
of  the  setting  sun.  Then  some  tide  had  slowly  swung 
them  a  little  sideways,  so  that  they  still  faced  toward  the 
brightness  of  the  West,  long  after  the  sun  had  gone,  and 
the  glory  of  its  departing  had  been  infused  into  and 
flooded  the  heavens.  A  great  cumulus  cloud  reared 
itself  out  of  the  western  horizon,  in  tower  and  pinnacle 
of  ineffable  rose,  with  transparent  aqueous  blue  dwelling 


THE    OSBORNES  127 

in  the  folds  of  it  and  at  the  base  of  it  lay  the  campaniles 
and  roofs  of  Venice.  And  Claude  had  been  beside  her, 
he  whose  beauty  intoxicated  her,  so  that  she  interpreted 
all  he  said  or  did  through  the  medium  of  that.  He  had 
often  yawned  at  things  that  engrossed  her,  he  had  often 
felt  that  long  lingering  before  certain  pictures  was  tedious, 
but  his  reason  for  it  had  ever  been  the  same,  and  the 
reason  was  an  intoxicating  one.  Then  pictures  and 
campaniles  absorbed  her,  and  in  consequence  he,  so  he 
complained,  got  the  less  of  her.  "Put  me  down  in  Clap- 
ham  Junction,"  he  had  said  once,  "and  if  I  find  you 
there  I  shan't  ask  for  Venice.  Tintoret.  Yes,  No.  20 
is  by  Tintoret.  How  did  you  guess?  I  see  no  label  on 
the  frame:  they  should  have  them  all  labelled.  What 
a  handsome  frame!" 

On  another  day,  the  only  one  on  which  the  halcyon 
weather  had  played  them  a  trick,  they  had  gone  out  in 
the  morning  to  Burano,  rowing  at  full  tide  over  the 
shadows  and  water  of  oily  calm,  with  above  them  a  sky 
that  was  turquoise,  but  for  a  few  pale  combed  wisps  of 
cloud.  Northward  it  had  been  very  clear,  and  the  white 
range  of  snow  mountains  so  sharp  cut  that  it  seemed 
that  even  on  an  autumn  day  they  could  row  across  and 
ascend  those  cliffs  of  white.  Then  —  Claude  had  noticed 
it  first  —  a  great  tattered  edge  of  gray  vapour  streamed 
southward  off  the  Alps,  and  spread  with  the  swiftness  of 
spilt  water  along  the  floor,  in  pool  and  promontory  of 
vapour  over  the  northern  heavens.  He  and  she  had  been 
talking  Italian  in  ridiculous  fashion  to  their  head  gondolier, 
and  now  Claude  pointed  dramatically  northward  and 
said,  "Curioso  cloudo."  On  which  all  the  gaiety  and 


128  THEOSBORNES 

laziness  of  that  child  of  the  south  vanished,  and  he  and 
his  poppe  put  the  boat  about  and  rowed  top  speed  for 
Venice.  They  had  come  in  expectation  of  fine  weather, 
with  no  jelse,  but  before  they  were  halfway  home  a  squall 
of  prodigious  wind  and  blinding  rain  struck  them,  and 
for  an  hour  she  and  Claude  nestled  close  beneath  one 
mackintosh,  hearing  the  squeal  of  the  wind,  the  buffet 
of  the  rain,  and  by  degrees  the  gradual  rising  of  waves. 
They  made  a  bolt  for  it  across  the  last  open  water  between 
San  Michele  and  Venice,  narrowly  escaping  being 
swamped. 

Somehow  to  Dora  now,  that  seemed  the  best  of  all 
the  days.  The  gondola  was  three  inches  deep  in  savage 
spray-blown  water.  She  knew  there  was  danger  of 
some  sort  abroad,  when  they  had  already  started,  and 
had  gone  too  far  in  the  maniac  wind  that  descended  on 
them  to  get  back,  but  crouching  beneath  the  one  mackin- 
tosh with  Claude,  with  the  rain  streaming  in  from  a 
hundred  points,  and  with  the  danger  of  capsize  imminent, 
she  found  a  glory  and  triumph  in  the  moment,  which, 
indeed,  was  independent,  or  almost  so,  of  Venice,  and 
was  pure  Claude.  He  had  lit  a  cigarette,  after  succeeding 
in  striking  a  match  with  infinite  trouble,  saying,  "Now 
for  the  last  smoke  this  side  the  grave,"  and  Dora  found 
a  sublimity  of  sangfroid  in  this  remark.  But  at  that 
time  all  he  said  or  did  was  golden:  he  gilded  all  things 
for  her. 

In  those  days  she  was  incapable  of  criticism  with 
regard  to  anything  that  concerned  him,  for  to  her,  lover 
of  beauty  as  she  was,  his  beauty,  which  now  was  a  posses- 
sion of  hers,  was  a  thing  of  dazzling  and  blinding  quality. 


THEOSBORNES  129 

It  blinded  her  still,  but  it  must  be  supposed  that  the 
enthrallment  of  it  was  quite  absolute  no  longer,  since 
now,  at  any  rate,  she  knew  it  was  that  which  had 
taken  the  very  command  and  control  of  herself  out  of 
her  hands.  She  was  in  love  with  him,  that  was  perfectly 
true,  but  it  was  with  his  beauty  (an  inextricable  part  of 
him)  that  she  was  in  love.  And  now,  to-day,  as  she 
leaned  out  of  her  window  over  the  summer  stillness,  she 
found  that  she  was  beginning  to  be  able  to  look  undazzled 
at  him,  to  see  the  qualities  and  nature  of  her  husband 
as  they  were  themselves,  not  as  they  had  appeared  to  her 
in  the  early  months  of  her  marriage,  when  she  could  not 
see  him  at  all  except  through  the  enchanted  haze  which 
surrounded  him.  Before  she  married  him  she  had  been 
able  to  do  as  she  did  to-day,  to  know  that  at  times  some- 
thing (trivial  it  always  was,  as  when  he  spoke  of  some 
woman  as  a  "handsome  lady")  made  her  check  suddenly. 
But  when  they  were  married,  when  he  and  his  wonderful 
beauty  were  hers,  and  she  was  his,  that  power  of  criticism 
had  altogether  left  her,  and  it  was  only  with  a  sort  of 
incredulous  wonder  that  she  could  remember  that  she 
had  ever  been  capable  of  it.  To-day,  now  that  he  was 
absent,  for  she  had  not  seen  him  for  over  twenty-four 
hours,  she  for  the  first  time  consciously  registered  the 
fact  that  the  power  of  judgment  and  criticism  as  regards 
him  had  come  back  to  her. 

Dora  drew  herself  in  from  her  leaning  out  of  the  window, 
and  settled  herself  in  a  chair.  This  discovery  rather 
startled  her.  Insignificant  as  it  might  sound,  if  she  had 
described  it  to  May  Franklin  or  some  other  friend,  it 
seemed  to  herself  to  be  indicative  of  some  essential  and 


i3o  THE    OSBORNES 

radical  change  in  her  relation  to  her  husband.  And 
it  concerned  itself  not  with  the  present  only  and  with  the 
future,  but  reached  back  into  the  past,  so  that  a  hundred 
little  scenes  and  memories  bore  a  different  aspect  to 
her  now  from  that  which  they  had  hitherto  borne.  It 
had  been  enchanting  to  her,  for  instance,  that  he  had 
said  he  would  as  soon  be  at  Clapham  Junction  as  at 
Venice,  provided  she  was  with  him.  At  the  time  she 
had  only  thrilled  with  ecstatic  wonder  that  she  could  be 
so  much  to  him :  now  she  made  the  comment  that  he  did 
not  really  care  for  Venice.  That  was  a  pity;  it  was  a 
defect  in  him,  that  he  was  indifferent  to  the  exquisite 
beauties  with  which  he  was  surrounded.  She  had  not 
seen  that  before.  It  made  him,  so  to  speak,  have  no 
part  in  her  Venice,  which,  strangely  enough,  he  had 
created  for  her.  It  was  as  if  a  father  disowned,  did  not 
recognize  his  own  child. 

Dora  had  no  desire  to  pursue  this  train  of  thought, 
for  there  was  something  vaguely  uncomfortable  at  the 
back  of  it  at  which  she  did  not  wish  to  look  closer.  So 
she  mentally  brushed  it  aside,  and,  a  thing  that  was  a 
daily  if  not  an  hourly  habit  of  hers,  took  her  mind  back 
to  the  first  days  in  which  they  had  been  together,  and  let 
it  float  her  slowly  down  the  enchanted  weeks  that  had 
followed  till  it  landed  her  at  the  present  day  again.  Such 
retrospect  had,  indeed,  passed  out  of  the  range  of  voluntary 
thought:  it  was  like  the  pillow  on  which  her  mind,  when 
at  rest,  instinctively  reposed  itself.  After  Venice  they 
had  wandered  a  week  or  two  longer  in  North  Italy,  until 
toward  the  end  of  October  a  foretaste  of  winter  caught 
them  on  the  Italian  lakes,  and  they  had  started  for  home, 


THEOSBORNES  131 

arriving  there  at  the  beginning  of  November.  They 
had  but  passed  through  London,  spending  a  couple  of 
days  at  Claude's  little  flat  in  Mount  Street,  and  had  then 
gone  down  to  Grote  for  the  first  big  pheasant  shoot  of 
the  year.  She  found  both  her  mother  and  Austell  there. 

Dora  was  essentially  appreciative  of  all  the  delightful 
things  in  life  which  can  only  be  obtained  by  abundant 
money,  and  hitherto  very  few  of  these  had  been  within 
her  reach.  True,  she  was  sensible  enough  to  enjoy 
pictures  that  were  not  hers,  to  look  at  beautiful  things 
exposed  for  the  public  in  museums  and  art  collections; 
but  she  did  not  belong  to  that  slightly  unreal  class  of 
enthusiasts  who  say  that  as  long  as  they  are  able  to  see 
fine  pictures  and  fine  statues  they  get  from  them  all  the 
pleasure  which  such  things  are  capable  of  giving.  Nor 
again  was  she  deficient  in  her  appreciation  of  comfort,  and 
she  knew  that  it  was  infinitely  nicer  to  telephone  from  the 
flat  at  Mount  Street,  as  they  had  done  on  the  two  evenings 
they  were  there,  and  get  a  box  at  the  theatre,  than  getting 
seats  at  the  back  of  the  dress  circle,  or,  if  times  were 
exceptionally  bad,  having  an  egg  with  her  tea  and  taking 
her  humble  place  in  the  queue  for  the  pit.  She  was 
humorist  enough  and  of  a  sufficiently  observant  type  to 
find  entertainment  of  a  kind  while  waiting  in  the  queue, 
but  it  seemed  to  her  insincere  to  say  that  you  preferred 
going  to  a  theatre  in  such  mode.  Similarly,  though  you 
had  such  a  beautiful  view  and  got  so  much  air  on  the 
top  of  a  motor  bus  that  such  a  mode  of  progression 
along  the  London  streets  was  quite  enjoyable,  it  was 
really  far  more  enjoyable  to  have  your  own  motor,  though 
your  outlook  was  not  from  so  elevated  a  perch  and  there, 


i32  THE    OSBORNES 

was  probably  not  quite  so  much  air.  And  she  was 
perfectly  aware  that  she  took  the  keenest  pleasure  in  all 
the  ease  and  comfort  with  which  she  had  been  surrounded 
since  her  engagement.  Pierre  Loti,  as  she  had  once 
quoted  to  May  Franklin,  had  said  that  it  was  exquisite 
to  be  poor,  but  for  herself  she  found  it  (having  had  long 
experience  of  poverty)  much  more  exquisite  to  be  rich. 
But  there  were  things  about  that  shooting  week,  in  spite 
of  her  newly  awakened  love  and  her  newly  found  opulence, 
which  was  in  such  resounding  evidence  there,  which 
gave  her  bad  moments:  moments  when  she  was  between 
bitterness  and  laughter,  nearer  perhaps  to  laughter 
than  the  other,  but  to  laughter  hi  which  bitterness  would 
have  found  the  reflection,  at  any  rate,  of  itself. 

A  rather  ponderous  plan,  evolved  by  the  geniality 
and  kindness  of  her  father-in-law,  underlay  that  week. 
He  had  been  in  London  for  the  inside  of  one  of  the  days 
that  she  and  Claude  had  stopped  in  town  after  their 
return  from  Venice,  en  route  for  Grote,  and  had  lunched 
with  her.  Claude  had  been  out:  Uncle  Alf  had  sent 
for  him  —  rather  peremptorily,  so  it  seemed  to  Dora  — 
'  to  come  down  to  Richmond,  and  since  Uncle  Alf  was 
purseholder  for  them  both,  and  had  intimated  that  he 
wished  to  see  him  on  matters  connected  with  the  purse, 
the  invitation  had  the  authority  of  a  command.  Con- 
sequently she  and  Mr.  Osborne  lunched  alone. 

"And  you  look  rarely,  my  dear,"  her  father-in-law 
had  said,  giving  her  a  loud  smacking  kiss.  "Claude 
seems  to  agree  wTith  you,  bless  his  heart  and  yours,  for 
there  is  nothing  like  being  married,  is  there,  when  all's 
said  and  done,  provided  you  find  him  as  your  heart  points 


THEOSBORNES  133 

out  to  you  ?  And  you'll  give  old  Dad  a  bit  of  lunch,  and 
leave  to  smoke  his  cigar  with  you  afterward,  and  tell 
him  about  Venice.  My  dear,  I've  looked  forward  to 
your  return  with  that  boy  of  mine,  so  as  never  was,  and 
I'm  blessed  if  I  don't  believe  Mrs.  O.  wouldn't  be  jealous 
of  you  if  it  wasn't  that  you  were  his  wife.  But  she  thinks 
nought's  too  good  for  Claude,  even  if  it's  you.  She  says 
I  run  on  about  you  like  a  clock  that  won't  stop  striking! 
and  I  dare  say  she's  in  the  right  of  it." 

It  was  not  very  easy  to  "tell"  Mr.  Osborne  about 
Venice,  because  it  was  hard  to  think  of  any  common 
ground  on  which  he  and  Venice  might  conceivably  meet 
and  appreciate  each  other,  but  the  description  seemed 
to  satisfy  him,  for  it  was  largely  "Claude  and  I."  And 
what  satisfied  him  even  more  was  the  evident  happiness 
of  the  girl:  she  was  in  love  with  life,  with  love  and  with 
Claude  and  with  beautiful  things.  Claude  he  had  given 
her,  beautiful  things  he  could  give  her,  and  he  asked  if 
it  was  possible  to  pick  up  a  Tintoret  or  two.  Then  came 
the  plan,  unfolded  to  her  with  almost  boisterous 
enjoyment. 

"Mrs.  O.  and  I  have  put  our  heads  together,"  he  said, 
"and  I'm  her  ambassador,  accredited,  don't  they  say?  by 
her,  and  with  authority  to  put  propositions  before  you. 
Well,  it's  just  this:  when  that  dear  boy  and  you  come 
down  to  Grote  to-morrow,  we  want  you  to  be  master 
and  mistress  of  the  house,  and  Mrs.  O.  and  me  and  Per 
and  all  the  rest  of  them  to  be  your  guests.  It'll  be  for  you 
to  say  what  time  we  breakfast,  and  to  see  cook,  and  Claude 
will  arrange  the  shoots,  and  give  us  a  glass  of  wine  after 
dinner  if  he  thinks  it  won't  hurt  us,  and  it'll  be  found 


i34  THEOSBORNES 

it  won't,  if  he  sticks  to  the  cellar  as  I've  laid  down  for 
myself  and  of  which  I'll  give  him  the  key.  It'll  give 
you  a  sort  of  lesson,  like,  my  dear,  as  to  how  to  make 
your  guests  comfortable,  as  I'll  be  bound  you  will." 

It  required  no  gifts  of  perception  whatever  to  be  able 
to  appreciate  the  kindness  and  affection  of  that  speech, 
and  Dora  did  them  full  justice.  At  the  same  time  she 
could  not  help  being  conscious  of  many  little  jerks.  She 
remembered  also  the  party  there  had  been  at  Grote 
shortly  after  her  engagement,  wondered  if  the  same  sort 
of  gathering  would  be  assembling  again,  and  tried  to 
think  of  herself  as  hostess  to  Mrs.  Price,  Lady  Ewart, 
and  Mrs.  Per.  They  were  really  very  terrible  people, 
and  on  this  occasion  of  her  home-coming  with  Claude 
it  was  beyond  all  question  that  the  badinage  would  be 
of  the  most  superlative  order.  She  remembered  with 
fatal  distinctness  how  her  mother-in-law  had  alluded 
to  Mrs.  Per,  before  Dora  met  her,  as  very  superior,  and 
it  seemed  to  her  that  no  long  and  conscientious  analysis 
of  character  could  have  arrived  at  a  report  so  definitely 
and  completely  true  as  was  the  verdict  conveyed  by 
those  two  words.  Yet  she  had  married  Claude,  she 
loved  Claude:  to  accept  the  burden  of  this  honour  was 
clearly  one  of  the  obligations  entailed  upon  her,  for  it 
was  Mr.  Osborne's  wish,  his  very  kindly  wish,  backed 
and  originated  by  his  wife,  and  there  was  no  shadow  of 
excuse  to  shelter  under  for  declining  it.  So  her  pause 
before  replying  was  not  greater  than  could  be  well  filled 
by  the  smile  with  which  she  greeted  the  proposal. 

"Ah,  but  how  dear  of  you,"  she  said  cordially,  "but 
we  shall  make  all  kinds  of  mistakes.  Are  you  sure  you 


THEOSBORNES  135 

and  Mrs.  Osborne  are  willing  to  risk  our  making  a  hash  of 
your  party?  I  shall  probably  forget  most  things,  and 
Claude  will  complete  it  by  forgetting  the  remainder." 

Mr.  Osborne  laughed. 

"My  dear,  you  fill  my  plate  with  that  hash,  and  I'll 
ask  for  more,"  he  said.  "I'll  send  up  my  plate  twice 
for  that  hash,  hey  ?  That's  capital,  and  it  will  give  Mrs. 
O.  a  bit  of  a  rest,  for  she's  a  little  overdone.  Indeed, 
I  was  thinking  of  putting  off  the  party,  but  she  wouldn't 
hear  of  it.  And  there's  another  thing,  my  dear.  Couldn't 
you  manage  to  call  me  'Dad,'  as  the  boys  do?  It  isn't 
in  nature  that  you  should  call  Claude's  father  Mr. 
Osborne.  I  know  it's  a  favour  to  ask,  like,  but  you  and 
me  hit  it  off  from  the  first,  didn't  we?  You  was  the 
right  wife  for  Claude,  and  no  mistake." 

That  met  with  a  far  more  spontaneous  response  from 
Dora.  There  was  affection,  kindness,  as  always,  in 
what  he  said,  but  there  was  more  than  that  now  — 
namely,  a  pathos  of  a  very  touching  kind,  in  his  making 
a  favour  of  so  simple  a  request.  Dora  was  ashamed 
of  not  having  complied  with  it  before  it  was  asked. 

"Why,  of  course,"  she  said.  "Dad,  Dad,  doesn't 
it  come  naturally  ?  And  if  you  talk  such  nonsense,  Dad, 
about  its  being  a  favour,  I  shall  —  I  shall  call  Claude 
Mr.  Osborne  Junior." 

He  patted  her  hand  gently. 

"Thank  you,  my  dear,  thank  you,"  he  said.  "Mrs. 
Per  calls  me  Mr.  Osborne,  as  you've  often  heard,  and 
I  don't  know  that  with  her  somehow  that  I  want  her  to 
call  me  different.  But  I  know  with  people  like  you,  born 
in  another  rank  of  life,  that's  not  the  custom.  You  make 


i36  THEOSBORNES 

pet  names  and  what  not,  not  that  I  ask  that.  But  I 
should  feel  it  as  a  favour,  my  dear,  I  should  indeed,  if 
you  felt  you  could  manage  to  say  'Dad'  like  the  boys  do." 

Dora  held  up  a  reproachful  forefinger. 

"Now,  I  warn  you,  Dad,"  he  said.  "In  one  moment 
Claude  shall  be  called  what  I  said  he  should  be." 

"Then  not  a  word  more  about  it.  Well,  give  my  love 
to  that  rascal  who's  got  so  much  more  than  he  deserves, 
bless  him,  and  we  expect  you  both  to-morrow.  Gone 
to  see  Uncle  Alf,  has  he?  Poor  old  Alf:  a  mass  of 
lumbago  he  was  when  I  saw  him  two  days  ago.  And 
acid?  I  should  scarce  have  thought  that  anyone  could 
have  felt  so  unkind.  And  a  beautiful  day  it  was,  too, 
with  the  sun  shining,  and  all  nature,  as  you  may  say, 
rejoicing  —  all  but  poor  old  Alf,  God  bless  him.  But 
Claude  always  does  him  more  good  than  a  quart  of 
liniment,  or  embrocation  either,  though  what  he  spends 
on  doctors'  stuff  is  beyond  all  telling." 

Such  was  Mr.  Osborne's  plan,  and,  as  has  been  said, 
the  accomplishment  of  it  gave  Dora  some  rather  bad 
moments.  The  party  was  terrifically  ill-assorted:  Lady 
Ewart,  Mrs.  Price,  and  one  or  two  more  like  them  and 
their  husbands,  being  balanced  against  her  mother  and 
Austell,  the  Hungarian  ambassador  and  his  wife,  and 
several  others  of  that  particular  world  in  which  both 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Osborne  so  much  wished  to  be  at  home. 
Dora,  in  consequence,  was  positively  tossed  and  gored 
by  unremitting  dilemma.  She  was  obliged  to  make 
herself  what  she  would  have  called  both  cheap  and 
vulgar  in  order  to  convey  at  all  to  the  Prices  and  Ewarts 
that  particular  pitch  of  cordiality  to  which  they  were 


THEOSBORNES  137 

accustomed.  Alderman  Price,  for  instance,  habitually 
declined  a  second  helping,  not  because  he  did  not  want 
(and  intend)  to  have  it,  but  because  good  manners  made 
him  say  "No"  the  first  time  and  "Yes"  the  second. 
As  for  asking  for  more,  as  Austell  did,  he  would  not  have 
considered  that  any  kind  of  behaviour.  He  was  used 
to  be  pressed  or  "tempted,"  and  Dora  had  to  press  and 
tempt  him  —  a  thing  which,  though  she  would  have 
been  delighted  if  he  had  eaten  a  whole  haunch  of  venison, 
she  found  difficult  to  do  naturally.  You  had  to  call 
the  footman  back  (Mrs.  Osborne  did  it  quite  easily), 
and  get  him  to  put  Mr.  Price's  plate  aside,  and  wait  till 
he  had  given  the  affair  a  second  thought.  Then  he  said, 

"Well,  I  don't  know  as  if "  and  the  matter  was 

brought  to  a  triumphant  conclusion.  Yet  it  was  not 
easy  to  manage  if  the  procedure  was  new  to  you.  Or, 
again,  his  wife  particularly  liked  a  glass  of  port  after 
dinner,  which  after  all  was  a  completely  innocent  desire, 
but  her  gentility  was  such  that  she  would  never  have 
thought  of  accepting  it  when  it  was  casually  offered  her, 
but  every  night  it  had  to  be  accepted  in  order  to  oblige 
Dora.  Mrs.  Osborne,  before  giving  up  the  reins  of 
government  to  her  daughter-in-law,  had  imparted  this 
diplomatic  instruction,  and  Dora  had  been  subsequently 
assured  that  her  pressing  and  tempting  was  held  to  be 
the  perfection  of  hospitality. 

The  flow  of  badinage,  too,  that  went  on  incessantly 
from  morning  till  night,  and  was  almost  exclusively 
matrimonial  in  character,  was  difficult  to  live  up  to, 
for  whatever  she  or  Claude  did  was  construed  by  Mr. 
Osborne  or  Sir  Thomas  (with  whom  Dora,  so  she  was 


138  THEOSBORNES 

assured  by  Lady  Ewart,  had  become  a  favourite)  into 
having  some  connubial  bearing.  If,  as  happened  one 
day,  Claude  drove  Mrs.  Price  home  from  the  shooting, 
Lady  Ewart,  with  an  inflamed  and  delighted  countenance, 
told  Dora  that  she  wouldn't  wonder  if  they  lost  their 
way,  and  said  the  motor  had  broken  down,  to  explain 
their  coming  hi  late.  Or  again  Dora  was  pompously 
asked  by  Sir  Thomas,  on  a  morning  of  streaming  wet, 
when  no  shooting  was  possible,  to  have  a  game  of  billiards, 
and  accepting  this  proposal  was  expected  to  be  immensely 
amused  by  the  suggestion  that  Claude  would  be  found 
hiding  in  the  window  seat,  to  hear  what  went  on.  The 
joke  was  all-embracing ;  if  she  spoke  to  Claude  somebody 
wondered  (audibly)  what  she  was  saying;  if  she  spoke 
to  anyone  else,  it  was,  again  audibly,  imagined  that 
Claude  was  looking  jealous.  And  if,  for  the  moment, 
she  did  not  speak  to  anybody,  wonder  was  expressed  as 
to  what  was  on  her  mind. 

All  this  was  trivial  enough  in  itself,  and,  as  she  well 
knew,  oceans  and  continents  of  kindliness  lay  behind  it. 
Her  guests  —  this  section  of  them  at  any  rate  —  were 
pleased  and  well  entertained  as  far  as  her  part  was  con- 
cerned, and  were  charmed  with  her.  But  during  all 
those  seven  stricken  days  —  for  the  party  was  of  the  most 
hospitable  order,  and  embraced  a  complete  week  — 
she  had  to  nail  a  brave  face,  so  to  speak,  over  her  own, 
and  set  her  teeth  inside  the  smiling  mouth.  The  Prices 
and  the  Ewarts  had  come  here  to  enjoy  themselves,  and 
clearly  they  did.  But  there  was  a  certain  thick-skinned 
robustness  which  was  necessary  to  anyone  who  had  to 
enter  into  the  spirit  of  their  enjoyment.  Had  the  party 


THEOSBORNES  139 

consisted  entirely  of  Ewarts  and  Prices  and  "Pers," 
Dora  would  have  found  her  own  conduct  an  affair  of 
infinitely  less  difficulty.  As  it  was,  her  mother  and 
Austell  were  there,  and  some  six  or  seven  more  of  her 
own  world  who  looked  on  with  faint  smiles  at  such  times 
as  humour  was  particularly  abundant,  and,  to  do  the 
barest  justice  to  it,  it  must  be  said  that  it  seemed  unfailingly 
ubiquitous.  One  night  Sir  Thomas  had  taken  Madame 
Kodjek,  the  wife  of  the  Hungarian  ambassador,  into 
dinner,  and  in  an  unusual  pause  in  the  conversation  Dora 
had  heard  her  say  in  her  faint  silvery  voice:  "How  very 
amusing,  Sir  Thomas.  What  fun  you  must  have  in 
Sheffield."  Then  she  turned  her  back  on  him,  put  a 
barrier  of  a  white  elbow  on  the  table  between  him  and 
her,  and  talked  to  Dora  herself,  three  places  off,  for  the 
rest  of  dinner  —  a  thing  which,  as  Sir  Thomas's  indignant 
face  silently  testified,  was  conduct  to  which  he  was 
unaccustomed.  Clearly  such  breach  of  ordinary  manners 
was  a  thing  unheard  of  in  Sheffield.  Dora,  halfway 
between  giggles  and  despair  at  the  incident,  had  not, 
though  longing  to  know,  the  heart  to  ask  Mimi  after- 
ward what  was  the  particular  incident  that  made  her 
conclude  that  life  in  Sheffield  was  so  humorous  an  affair; 
but  Sir  Thomas  had  confided  in  his  favourite  that  he 
thought  the  Baroness  a  very  haughty  lady  and  without 
any  sense  of  what  was  due  "to  the  gentleman  who  took 
you  in  to  dinner." 

It  had  been  difficult,  therefore,  to  steer  a  course,  and, 
as  in  the  case  of  those  wandering  channels  in  the  lagoons, 
there  were  here  no  friendly  groups  of  pali  to  guide  her. 
She  had  to  guess  her  way,  turn  her  helm  swiftly  this  way 


i4o  THEOSBORNES 

and  that,  to  avoid  running  aground.  Had  she  not  been 
Dora  Osborne  she  would,  if  she  had  found  herself  in  a 
house  party  of  this  description,  have  had  entrancing 
bedroom  talks  to  Mimi  and  others  about  Sir  Thomas 
and  the  Ewarts,  and  —  the  Osbornes.  Such  talks 
would  not  have  been  unkindly;  she  would  have  seen, 
even  as  she  saw  now,  that  all  manner  of  excellent  qualities 
underlay  the  irredeemable  vulgarity,  and,  a  thing  more 
difficult  in  her  present  position,  she  would  have  seen  the 
humorous  side  of  affairs.  But,  as  it  was,  she  could  not 
have  any  bedroom  talks  at  all  of  this  description.  Indeed, 
Mimi  and  others  pointedly  avoided,  as  they  were  bound 
to  do,  any  mention  of  these  other  guests  from  the  amiable 
desire  not  to  say  things  that  would  embarrass  her.  Dora 
had  married  an  Osborne,  and  by  that  act  had  joined 
another  circle.  True,  she  had  not  in  the  least  left  her 
own,  but  she  had  taken  on,  by  necessity,  the  relations 
and  friends  of  her  husband.  Indeed,  looking  at  the 
transaction  as  a  whole,  there  was  not  one  of  her  friends 
who  did  not  think  she  had  done  right,  and  few  who  did 
not  a  little  envy  her.  There  were  some  slight  incon- 
veniences in  marrying  into  such  a  family,  but  they  weighed 
very  light  indeed  if  balanced  against  the  consequent 
advantages,  and  it  was  the  business  of  her  friends  to 
minimize  these  disadvantages  for  her,  pretend  that  Sir 
Thomas  made  no  particular  impression  on  them,  and  be 
deaf  to  Dora's  insidiousness  in  getting  Mrs.  Price  to 
have  her  glass  of  port.  And  the  advantages  were  so 
great:  she  had  gained  superabundant  wealth  in  exchange 
for  crippling  poverty,  the  Osbornes'  house  was  now  one 
to  which  everybody  of  any  sense,  and  many  of  no  sense, 


THEOSBORNES  141 

went,  if  they  were  so  fortunate  as  to  be  asked,  and,  above 
all,  she  had  married  that  charming  and  quiet  Adonis  of 
a  husband,  who  looked  anyhow  leagues  away  from  and 
above  his  effusive  parents. 

And  Claude?  During  all  this  week  Dora  had  been 
filled  with  an  almost  ecstatic  admiration  of  him.  He 
took  the  place  corresponding  to  that  which  she  herself 
so  difficultly  occupied,  with  perfect  ease  and  success,  and 
without  apparent  effort.  To  Mrs.  Price's  most  outrageous 
sallies  he  found  a  reply  that  convulsed  her  with  laughter, 
or  made  her,  as  the  case  might  be,  call  him  a  "naughty 
man,"  and  the  thing  seemed  to  be  no  trouble  to  him. 
And  for  the  time,  anyhow,  such  replies  gave  her  no  jerks, 
or,  if  they  did,  they  were  jerks  of  relief.  "I  shall  warn 
Sir  Thomas,  Lady  Ewart,"  he  would  say,  "and  you  will 
find  yourself  watched,"  and  without  pause  or  hint  of 
discomfiture  continue  a  Bach  conversation  with  Madame 
Kodjek. 

Dora  had  set  herself  with  a  heartfelt  enthusiasm  to 
study  and  find  out  the  secret  of  this  wonderful  perform- 
ance, and  she  came  to  the  conclusion  that  it  was  con- 
summate tact  grafted  on  to  a  nature  as  kindly  as  his 
father's  or  mother's  that  produced  this  perfect  flower 
of  behaviour.  And  the  tact  —  a  rare  phenomenon  rather, 
for  tact  implies  the  tactician,  the  pleasant  schemer  —  was 
apparently  unconscious.  At  least  if  it  was  conscious, 
it  was  Claude's  delightful  modesty  that  disclaimed  the 
knowledge  of  it.  One  evening  she  had  a  word  with  him 
about  it. 

"Darling,  I  don't  know  how  you  manage,"  she  said, 
"and  oh,  Claude,  I  wish  you  would  teach  me.  Every- 


i42  THEOSBORNES 

one's  delighted  with  you,  and  you  do  it  all  so  easily. 
How  can  you  flirt  —  yes,  darling,  flirt  —  with  Mrs. 
Price  one  moment  and  without  transition  talk  to  Mimi  on 
the  other  side?" 

"Oh,  the  Price  woman  isn't  so  bad,"  said  he.     "She's 
a  kind  old  soul  really,  and  if  you  chaff  her  a  bit  she  asks 


no  more." 


He  had  come  in  to  see  her  before  going  down  to  the 
smoking  room  again,  where  the  best  cigars  in  England 
were,  so  to  speak,  on  tap,  and  where  Per  and  Sir  Thomas, 
between  the  cigars,  a  little  brandy  and  soda,  and  the 
recollections  of  their  prowess  among  the  pheasants  during 
the  day,  always  sat  up  late.  In  Mr.  Osborne's  house 
it  was  one  of  the  rules  of  honour  that  the  host  should 
express  a  wish  to  sit  up  later  than  any  of  his  guests, 
or  wait  at  any  rate  till  they  all  had  yawned  before 
proposing  retirement,  and  Claude,  after  this  cheerful 
remark  about  Mrs.  Price,  turned  to  leave  the  room 
again.  Dora  knew  what  was  expected  of  him  and  sud- 
denly rebelled. 

"Surely  you  can  leave  them  to  drink  and  smoke  and 
turn  out  the  lights,"  she  said.  "Do  stop  and  talk  to  me. 
I  have  sent  Hendon  away,  and  who  is  to  brush  my  hair  ? 
Besides,  I  want  to  talk.  I've  got  better  right  to  talk 
to  you  than  Sir  Thomas  has.  Oh,  Claude,  teach  me: 
you  are  yourself  all  the  time,  and  yet  you  can  say  things 
to  Mrs.  Price,  which,  if  it  wasn't  you " 

Dora  broke  off.  He  had  unpinned  the  tiara,  which 
was  one  of  his  father's  many  wedding  gifts  to  her,  and 
which  she  wore,  knowing  it  was  a  ludicrous  thing  to 
do  in  the  country,  because  it  pleased  him,  and  next 


THEOSBORNES  143 

moment  her  hair,  unpinned  also  by  a  movement  or  two 
of  his  deft  fingers,  fell  in  cataracts  round  her  face. 

"I  don't  see  the  trouble,"  he  said.  "Lady  Ewart 
isn't  your  sort,  darling,  but  it's  you  who  are  so  clever. 
It's  you  who  manage  so  well,  not  me.  Why,  she  said 
only  to-day  that  she  was  quite  jealous  of  you,  for  Sir 
Thomas  thought  such  a  lot  of  you,  though  of  course  that 
was  only  her  chaff.  And  they  say  he'll  be  in  the  running 
for  a  peerage  at  the  next  birthday  honours." 

For  the  moment  Dora  was  silent;  simply  she  could 
not  speak.  She  saw  in  the  looking  glass  in  front  of  her, 
looking  over  his  shoulder,  that  face  which  to  her  was  the 
most  beautiful  thing  in  the  world,  and  simultaneously 
she  heard  what  that  beautiful  mouth  said.  For  that 
instant  her  mind  was  divided :  it  could  not  choose  between 
beauty  and  the  hopelessness  of  what  was  said.  As  if 
anybody  cared  who  was  made  a  peer,  or  as  if  a  peerage 
conferred  not  only  nobility  but  a  single  ounce  of  breeding! 
As  if  a  problematic  Lord  Ewart  could  be  for  that  reason 
even  a  shade  more  tolerable  than  a  Sir  Thomas  of  the 
same  name!  What  could  it  matter,  except  to  guards 
and  railway  porters  who  might  count  on  a  rather  larger 
tip?  And  then  the  greater  potency  of  her  lover's  face 
absorbed  her,  and  she  lifted  up  her  hands  and  drew  it 
down  to  her.  "Ah,  well,  what  does  it  all  matter?"  she 
said,  "so  long  as  there's  you  and  me?  But  go  down, 
dear,  if  you  think  you  had  better,  and  be  sure  to  yawn 
a  great  deal,  so  that  they  won't  sit  up  very  late." 

But  after  he  had  gone  she  wondered  whether  she 
guessed  the  reason  why  Claude  made  himself  appropriate 
so  easily  to  Lady  Ewart  and  Mrs.  Price.  Was  it  simply 


144  THEOSBORNES 

because  he  found  no  difficulty  in  doing  so  ?  Was  not  his 
cleverness,  his  tact,  shown  rather  in  the  fact  that  he  could 
talk  to  Mimi  appropriately?  And  it  was  at  that  moment, 
as  she  remembered  now,  that  a  certain  trouble,  vague  and 
distant  as  yet,  and  couched  in  the  innermost  recesses  and 
darkness  of  her  mind,  began  to  stir.  She  scarcely  then 
knew  what  it  was:  she  knew  only  that  there  was  veiled 
trouble  somewhere. 

After  this  week  of  the  shooting  party,  she  and  Claude 
had  returned  to  town,  still  occupying  the  flat  in  Mount 
Street,  where  they  remained  till  Christmas,  with  week- 
ends in  the  country.  Most  of  these  had  been  passed  at 
the  houses  of  Dora's  friends,  and  it  could  not  but  please 
and  gratify  her  to  find  how  Claude  was  welcomed  and 
liked,  so  that,  if  at  Grote  there  had  been  trouble  astir, 
it  was  still  again.  He  did  all  the  usual  things  better 
than  the  average :  he  shot  well,  he  played  golf  excellently, 
he  was  a  quiet  and  reliable  partner  at  bridge,  he  talked 
pleasantly,  always  got  up  when  a  woman  entered  the 
room,  and  always  opened  the  door  for  her  to  leave  it. 
Such  accomplishments  did  not,  it  is  true,  reach  down 
very  far  below  the  surface,  but  a  young  man,  if  he  happens 
to  be  quite  exceptionally  good-looking  and  has  such 
things  at  his  fingers'  ends,  will  generally  be  a  welcome 
guest.  Dora  had  never  actually  wanted  comforting 
with  regard  to  him,  but  it  pleased  her  to  see  that  he  took 
his  place  easily  and  naturally.  For  the  rest,  he  was  busy 
enough,  for  in  view  of  the  next  general  election  he  was 
nursing  a  suburban  constituency,  which  promised  well. 
He  spoke  with  fluency  and  good  sense,  he  was  making 
an  excellent  impression  in  public,  and  he  earned  a  con- 


THEOSBORNES  145 

siderable  personal  popularity  in  the  domestic  circles  of 
his  voters.  And  in  this  connection  Dora  had  another 
uncomfortable  moment. 

As  was  frankly  admitted  between  them,  she  could  help 
him  a  good  deal  here,  and  she  often  went  down  with  him 
and  made  innumerable  calls  at  West  Brentworth  on 
miles  of  detached  and  semi-detached  villas.  It  was 
an  advantage  beyond  doubt,  in  this  sort  of  place,  that 
Claude  had  married  a  girl  of  "title,"  and  Lady  Dora 
Osborne,  or,  as  she  was  more  generally  addressed,  Lady 
Osborne,  charmed  a  large  section  of  constituents  not 
only  because  she  was  delightful,  but  because  her  brother 
was  the  Earl  and  her  mother  the  Countess.  There  was 
no  use  in  denying  or  failing  to  make  the  most  of  this 
adventitious  advantage,  and  Dora  made  the  most  of  it 
by  being  completely  natural,  and  entering  with  zest  into 
the  questions  of  board-wages  and  the  iniquities  of  tweenies. 
She  could  do  that  with  knowledge  and  experience  to 
back  her,  since  such  minutiae  had  formed  a  very  real  part 
of  her  life  up  to  the  time  of  her  marriage,  and  her  mother 
was  an  adept  in  getting  the  most  out  of  those  who  were 
so  fortunate  as  to  be  the  recipients  of  the  somewhat 
exiguous  wages.  She  could  speak  about  beer  money 
and  the  use  of  coals  when  the  household  was  on  board- 
wages  with  point  and  accuracy,  and  it  charmed  West 
Brentworth  to  find  that  Lady  Osborne  was  not "  too  high" 
to  take  interest  in  such  matters.  At  other  houses,  how- 
ever, there  reigned  a  more  aristocratic  tone:  there  would 
be  a  peerage  and  a  copy  of  the  World  on  the  table, 
and  a  marked  unconsciousness  of  the  existence  of  any- 
body who  was  not  a  baronet.  There  the  parties  for 


146  THE    OSBORNES 

Newmarket  were  discussed,  and  Mrs.  Sandford,  pouring 
out  tea,  and  " tempting"  Lady  Osborne  to  a  second  cup, 
would  say  that  the  whole  world  seemed  to  have  been  in 
town  lately,  and  was  Lady  Osborne  dining  at  the  Carlton 
two  nights  ago  when  so  many  distinguished  people 
were  there? 

Upon  which  would  ensue  a  very  enlightened  conver- 
sation. Mrs.  Sandford  knew  quite  well  that  the  Earl 
of  Wendover  was  Dora's  first  cousin,  and  the  Viscount 
Bramley  her  second  cousin  (for  that  came  out  of  the 
peerage)  and  what  a  beautiful  terrace  there  was  at  Bramley 
(for  that  came  out  of  Country  Life). 

Then  —  and  this  was  the  uncomfortable  moment 
—  she  and  Claude  got  into  their  motor,  having  made  the 
last  call,  and  started  for  town.  Claude  said,  "What  a 
superior  woman  Mrs.  Sandford  seems  to  be." 

All  these  things,  and  others  of  which  these  were  typical, 
Dora  thought  over  as  she  sat  in  the  window  of  her  sola 
looking  over  the  Grand  Canal  on  that  baking  afternoon  in 
June  when  Claude  had  gone  to  Milan  to  meet  his  father 
and  mother.  They  were  all  trivial  enough,  each  at  any 
rate  was  trivial;  but  to-day  she  wondered  whether 
there  was  an  addition  sum  to  be  done  with  regard  to 
them.  Each,  if  she  took  them  singly,  might  be  disre- 
garded, just  as  half-pennies  have  no  official  status 
on  cheques  and  are  not  treated  seriously.  But  did  they 
add  up  to  something,  to  something  that  could  not  be 
disregarded  ? 

She  did  not  know,  and,  very  wisely,  forebore  to  con- 
jecture. Besides,  the  gross  heat  of  the  day  was  sub- 
siding, and  a  little  breeze  had  begun  to  stir;  below  the 


THEOSBORNES  147 

window  Giovanni  had  already  finished  the  toilet  of  the 
gondola,  and  was  putting  in  the  tea  basket,  since  she 
had  said  she  would  have  tea  out  on  the  lagoon.  Venice 
called  to  her,  beckoned  her  away  from  thoughts  where 
something  sombre  or  agitating  might  lie  concealed,  into 
the  sunlight  and  splendour  of  the  day. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

MR.  AND  MRS.  OSBORNE,  as  has  been  men- 
tioned, had  no  idea  of  planting  themselves  on 
Dora  and  her  husband  in  their  visit  to  Venice,  and  since 
the  visit  was  to  be  thoroughly  Bohemian  in  character,  and 
they  hoped  and  expected  to  rough  it,  it  had  seemed  to 
them  equally  unsuitable  to  go  to  an  hotel,  where  no  doubt 
mediaevalism  would  have  been  supplanted  by  modern 
conveniences.  They  both  wanted,  with  that  inexpressible 
elasticity  and  love  of  experience  which  was  characteristic 
of  them,  to  "  behave  native  fashion  and  do  like  the 
Venetians,"  as  Mrs.  Osborne  put  it,  and  indeed  the 
phrase  pleased  her  husband  no  less  than  herself.  So 
they  had  taken  the  Palazzo  Dandoli  for  a  fortnight,  at 
a  prodigious  weekly  rent,  which  included,  however,  the 
wages  of  the  servants  and  the  use  of  the  gondolas.  With 
a  view  to  roughing  it  thoroughly,  Mrs.  Osborne  had 
only  brought  her  maid  with  her,  and  her  husband  was 
completely  unattended.  It  was  to  be  a  jaunt,  a  wedding 
trip,  a  renewal  of  old  times.  Probably  there  would  be 
little  to  eat  and  drink,  and  heaven  only  knew  what  kind 
of  a  bed  to  sleep  in,  while  an  Italian  manservant  would 
probably  not  know  how  to  fold  trousers.  But  all  these 
possible  inconveniences  were  part  of  behaving  "native- 
fashion,"  and  were  not  only  to  be  expected  but  welcomed 
as  being  part  of  the  genuine  article. 
The  house  stood  on  the  eastern  outskirts  of  Venice, 

148 


THEOSBORNES  149 

with  a  garden  facing  San  Michele  and  the  lagoon,  and 
here  Dora  strolled  with  her  father-in-law  on  the  morning 
after  their  arrival,  waiting  for  the  appearance  of  Mrs. 
Osborne,  who,  since  they  had  arrived  late  the  night  before, 
was  taking  it  easy,  and  was  not  expected  down  till  lunch 
time  at  half-past  twelve.  Dora  knew  the  owner  of  the 
place  and  had  been  there  before,  but  never  in  these  early 
days  of  summer,  while  yet  the  gardens  were  unscorched 
and  the  magic  of  spring  had  woven  its  ultimate  spell. 
All  the  past  was  redolent  in  the  walls  of  mellowed  brick, 
the  niches  empty  for  the  most  part,  save  where  a  bust 
or  two  of  stained  Carrara  marble  still  lingered,  in  the 
gray  of  the  ivy-hung  fountain,  in  the  grilles  of  curving 
ironwork  that  gave  view  across  the  lagoon  to  the  cypresses 
of  San  Michele,  and,  farther  away,  the  dim  tower  of 
Torcello.  Long  alleys  of  cut  and  squared  hornbeam, 
with  hop-like  flowers,  led  like  green  church  aisles  down 
the  garden,  and  spaces  of  grass  between  them  were 
hedged  in  by  more  compact  walls  of  yew  and  privet, 
with  its  pale  spires  of  blossom  faintly  sweet.  Round 
the  fountain  stood  three  serge-coated  sentinels  of  cypress, 
encrusted  over  with  their  nut-like  fruits,  and,  flame-like 
against  their  sombre  foliage,  were  azaleas  in  bright  green 
tubs,  and  the  swooning  whiteness  of  orange  blossom. 
Elsewhere,  the  formality  of  the  cut  hornbeam  alleys 
and  clipped  hedges  gave  place  to  a  gayer  and  more  sunny 
quarter,  though  even  there  Italy  lingered  in  the  pavement 
of  red  and  white  stone  that  led  between  the  more  English- 
looking  flower  beds.  Peach  trees,  in  foam  of  pink 
flower,  and  white  waterfalls  of  spiraea  were  background 
here;  in  front  of  them  stood  rows  of  stiff  fox-gloves  and 


i5o  THEOSBORNES 

in  front  again  a  riot  of  phlox  and  columbine  and  snap- 
dragon covered  the  beds  to  the  edge  of  the  path.  To  the 
left  lay  the  rose  garden,  approached  by  a  walk  of  tall 
Madonna  lilies,  already  growing  fat-budded,  and  prepared 
to  receive  the  torch  of  flower-life  from  the  roses,  when 
their  part  in  the  race  should  be  done,  and  homely  pansies, 
with  quaint,  trustful  faces,  made  a  velvet-like  diaper  of 
deeper  colour.  Here,  too,  stood  another  fountain  that 
from  leaden  pipe  shed  freshness  on  the  basin  below,  where 
clumps  of  Japanese  iris  were  already  beginning  to  unfold 
their  great  butterfly  flowers,  imperial  in  purple  or  virginal 
in  white,  and  over  the  green  marble  edge  of  it  quick 
lizards  flicked  and  vanished. 

Dora  had  arrived  at  the  palazzo  while  yet  the  morning 
was  young  and  dewy,  and,  leaving  word  that  she  had 
come,  passed  through  the  white  shady  courtyard  of  the 
house  and  down  the  long  alleys  of  the  garden  to  look  out 
on  the  lagoon  from  the  far  end  of  it.  The  tide  was  high 
and  the  cool  water  shimmered  over  the  flats  that  an  hour 
or  two  ago  were  still  exposed  and  lay  in  expanse  of  glisten- 
ing ooze,  or  green  with  fields  of  brilliant  seaweeds.  But 
the  red-sailed  fishing  boats  had  to  pass  between  the  rows 
of  pali  that  marked  the  channels,  and  a  little  company 
of  them  were  even  now  going  seaward.  The  wind  blew 
gently  from  the  north,  tempering  the  heat,  and  to  the 
north  were  visible  the  remote  summits  of  snow-clad  Alps. 
Just  opposite  were  the  orange  walls  and  black  cypresses 
of  San  Michele,  but  in  the  gaiety  of  the  gay  day  even  those 
associations  were  gladdened.  It  was  good  to  be  anything 
in  Venice,  even  to  be  dead,  and  resting  there  in  sound  of 
the  whispering  lagoon. 


THEOSBORNES  151 

Then  came  the  interruption  she  had  waited  for:  her 
name  was  jovially  called,  and  down  the  pergola  of  vines 
which  led  to  the  grille,  between  the  clumps  of  syringa 
and  riot  of  rambler,  came  Mr.  Osborne. 

He  had  left  England  with  the  intention  of  roughing  it 
and  enjoying  the  experience,  and  was  clad  in  the  way  that 
had  seemed  to  him  appropriate.  He  wore  a  Norfolk 
jacket  and  knickerbockers,  below  which  his  short  fat 
calves  looked  like  turned  oak  posts  clad  in  thick  worsted 
and  set  in  strong  brown  boots.  On  his  head  he  wore 
a  felt  hat  with  a  puggaree  attached  to  it,  and  round  his 
shoulders  was  a  strap  that  carried  a  large  binocular  glass. 
In  a  word,  he  appeared  like  a  man  deerstalking  in  the 
tropics.  Like  this  he  was  equal  to  any  foreigneering 
vicissitudes  and  provided  against  all  accidents  that  might 
happen  in  a  town  where,  instead  of  walking  from  one 
place  to  another,  you  went  in  a  black  sort  of  punt  with  a 
strange  battleaxe  at  the  prow. 

"Well,  dearie,  and  here  we  are,"  he  said,  "and  pleased 
we  are  to  be  here,  I  do  assure  you.  Passed  a  comfortable 
night,  too,  and  so  I  warrant  you  has  Mrs.  O.,  for  she 
was  asleep  still  when  I  came  downstairs.  But,  my  dear, 
they've  got  but  a  paltry  notion  of  furnishing  these  rooms. 
We  had  supper  last  night  when  we  got  in,  in  a  great 
room  as  big  as  the  hall  at  Grote,  and  nothing  there  but 
a  table  and  a  few  chairs  and  some  painted  canvas  on 
the  walls,  and  on  the  floor  a  rug  or  two  as  you  could 
scarcely  get  both  feet  upon.  However,  we  were  hungry, 
and  the  food  was  good  enough.  Macaroni  they  gave 
us,  and  a  bit  of  veal  and  some  cheese  and  strawberries. 
And  this  seems  a  pretty  bit  of  garden,  where  Mrs.  O. 


152  THEOSBORNES 

can  sit  and  be  cool  if  she  finds  the  heat  oppressive.  And 
it's  good  to  see  you,  my  dear,  and  blooming  you  look." 

He  gave  her  a  loud,  kind  kiss,  and  continued  to  pour 
forth  his  first  impressions  of  Venice. 

"Claude  met  us  at  Milan,  as  he'll  have  told  you,"  he 
said,  "and  saw  us  safe  here  last  night.  It's  strange, 
though,  going  to  your  house  in  a  boat,  and  such  a  smell 
as  there  was  at  the  last  corner  but  one  before  we  got  here 
I  never  encountered.  I  should  have  had  it  looked  into 
in  no  time  if  such  a  thing  had  occurred  in  the  works  at 
Sheffield.  But  it  seems  fine  and  open  here,  and  I've 
no  doubt  we  shall  be  well  enough  off.  But  to  think  of 
those  old  Doges  with  never  a  bathroom  in  their  houses, 
nor  hot  water  laid  on  nor  nothing.  But  I  enjoy  that, 
my  dear;  I  want  to  see  the  old  life  as  they  had  it,  and 
look  at  their  palaces,  ah!  and  live  in  one,  and  see  their 
pictures,  and  think  what  manner  of  folk  they  was,  being 
born  and  getting  married  and  dying  and  all,  in  the  very 
rooms  we  now  occupy." 

Dora  suddenly  laughed. 

"Oh,  Dad,"  she  said,  "you  are  too  heavenly.  But 
why  have  you  put  on  those  thick  clothes?  It's  going 
to  be  a  roasting  day.  I  am  glad  to  see  you.  I'm  sure 
you  will  find  the  house  comfortable,  and,  oh!  did  you 
ever  see  such  a  morning?  Look  out  there  across  the 
lagoon.  It's  Venice,  you  know,  Venice!" 

Mr.  Osborne  looked  out  through  the  iron  grille. 

"Well,  I'm  sure  it's  pretty  enough,"  he  said,  "and 
talk  of  sea  air,  why  the  sea's  all  round  you.  We  must 
have  come  a  matter  of  a  mile  over  the  viaduct  last  night 
after  we  left  the  mainland.  And  sea  air  is  what  I  want 


THEOSBORNES  153 

for  mother;  she  wants  a  bit  of  setting  up,  and  if  she 
feels  inclined  to  keep  quiet  and  not  look  at  the 
galleries  and  churches  and  sights  every  day,  my 
dear,  you'll  know  it's  because  she  isn't  quite  up  to 
the  mark.  Well,  well;  no,  I'm  not  anxious  about 
her,  for  she  takes  her  food,  and  was  as  pleased  to  come 
out  here,  such  as  never  was,  but  she's  been  a  bit  tired, 
and  must  take  a  rest." 

"She's  not  ill?"  asked  Dora.  "There's  nothing 
wrong  ? " 

"Not  a  bit  of  it.  'Tis  true,  I  wanted  her  to  see  the 
doctor  before  she  left  home,  but  she  wouldn't  hear  a  word 
of  it.  Just  to  go  to  Venice,  so  she  said,  and  see  Claude 
and  Dora,  and  not  do  much,  that's  the  prescription  for 
me,  she  said.  And  so  here  we  are,  my  dear.  Lunch  at 
half-past  twelve,  too;  how  strange  it  seems!  But  after 
the  breakfast  they  gave  me,  just  a  bit  of  toast  and  an 
egg,  I  don't  doubt  I  shall  be  ready  for  it.  But  the  coffee 
was  prime,  though  it  came  up  in  an  earthenware  pot. 
I  suppose  it  was  that  way  the  Doges  took  it.  Lor',  to 
think  of  it  all!  Wedding  the  sea,  too,  every  year.  I  read 
it  in  the  guidebook  on  the  journey.  A  curious  custom 
that  was,  heathenish,  you  may  say.  It  takes  one  back, 
doesn't  it?" 

It  was  still  an  hour  before  lunch  time,  and  at  Dora's 
suggestion  they  went  out  for  a  turn  in  her  gondola  which 
was  waiting,  since  Mrs.  Osborne  was  not  to  be  expected 
down  till  lunch  time.  Mr.  Osborne,  still  feeling  the 
insecurity  of  a  foreign  land,  refused  to  change  into  more 
suitable  clothes,  and,  already  perspiring  profusely, 
embarked  with  a  sense  of  being  prepared  for  anything. 


iS4  THE    OSBORNES 

As  they  got  in  Dora  gave  some  short  direction  to  her 

gondolier    in    Italian,   and    this    roused    his    admiring 

curiosity. 

"It's  a  strange  thing  too,"  he  said,  "that  you  say 
something  of  which  I  can't  understand  a  syllable,  and 
round  the  boat  goes,  as  if  you'd  said,  'Right  about  turn.' 
Such  a  bother  as  we  had  with  luggage  and  what  not, 
before  Claude  met  us.  But  Mrs.  O.  saw  the  hang  of 
it,  and  kept  saying,  'Venice,  Palazzo  Dandoli,'  whenever 
one  of  them  brigands  looked  in  on  us,  and  it  seemed  they 
wanted  no  more  than  that.  Brigands  they  looked,  my 
dear,  though  I  dare  say  they  were  honest  men  in  the 
employment  of  their  company.  And  what's  that  now, 
that  big  telegraph-looking  thing?" 

He  pointed  at  the  huge  disfiguring  posts  that  brought 
the  electric  power  into  Venice. 

"Oh,  electric  light,  I  think,"  said  Dora.  "Or  perhaps 
it's  telephone." 

"My  word,  and  I  never  expected  to  find  either  here," 
said  Mr.  Osborne.  "Do  you  mean  they  have  got  the 
light  and  the  'phone  ?  And  why,  if  that's  so,  aren't  they 
installed  in  the  Dandoli?" 

"Oh,  Dad,"  she  said,  "where  do  you  want  to  tele- 
phone to?" 

"No,  dearie,  I  don't  want  to  telephone,  but  you'd  have 
thought  that  in  a  place  like  that  I've  taken  they'd  surely 
have  had  the  modern  conveniences,  if  such  were  to  be 
had.  And  where  are  we  coming  to  now  ?" 

Dora  did  not  answer  at  once;  this  was  one  of  the  best 
places  of  all  in  that  city  of  best  places.  There  was  a 
sharp  turn  from  a  narrow  canal,  overhung  by  tall  red- 


THEOSBORNES  155 

stained  walls,  and  they  shot  out  into  the  Grand  Canal 
just  above  the  Rialto. 

"Oh,"  she  said,  "look,  look!" 

The  bow-shaped  bridge  lay  to  their  left,  as  from  the 
huddled  houses  they  swept  into  the  great  waterway;  a 
troubled  reflection  of  palaces  gleamed  in  the  tide,  the 
curve  of  the  Grand  Canal  was  flung  outward  and  onward, 
reeling  in  the  heat. 

Just  opposite  was  the  fish  market,  newly  rebuilt,  with 
columns  of  ornamented  iron  work.  Mr.  Osborne  pointed 
an  admiring  forefinger  at  it. 

"Well  I  never,"  he  said,  "to  think  to  see  the  fellow 
of  one  of  Per's  designs  in  Venice.  I  shall  have  the  laugh 
of  Per  over  that,  and  tell  him  he  copied  them  from  some 
old  courtyard  of  the  Doges,  or  what  not.  Beautiful  I  call 
them.  After  all,  they  were  wonderful  old  folk,  weren't 
they,  when  we  think  that  they  put  up  there  a  design  that 
might  have  been  made  in  Sheffield  to-day  \  I  assure  you, 
dearie,  they  are  just  like  Per's  drawings  for  No.  2  light 
arcade  same  as  is  in  the  showroom  at  the  works." 

Dora  had  not  been  attending  very  closely:  those  who 
love  Venice  are  apt  to  be  inattentive  when  some  new 
magic  comes  into  view,  and  to  Dora  the  bow-arch  of  the 
bridge  with  the  bow-arch  of  the  canal  below  grew  in 
wonder  the  oftener  that  she  saw  it. 

"Arches?"  she  asked.  "Arches  like  one  of  Per's 
designs?  Oh,  do  show  me." 

"Why,  that  open  place  there,"  said  Mr.  Osborne,  still 
immensely  interested.  "That  arcade  just  opposite,  with 
the  ornamental  arches  in  open  work." 

Dora  could  not  help  laughing. 


i56  THEOSBORNES 

"Oh,  dear  Dad,"  she  said,  "very  likely  they  are  Per's 
designs.  That's  the  new  fish  market,  just  being  rebuilt." 

And  then  it  struck  her  that  her  laugh  might  sound 
unkindly. 

"It  is  quite  possible  they  are  Per's  designs,"  she  said. 
"Would  it  not  be  thrilling  if  they  were?  Giovanni"  — 
again  she  spoke  in  Italian  —  "just  land  at  the  market 
and  ask  some  of  the  workmen  where  the  iron  arches  came 
from.  I  see  one  not  yet  put  up,  wrapped  in  straw.  There 
is  some  label  on  it.  See  if  it  is  from  Osborne,  Sheffield." 

Giovanni  floated  the  gondola  to  the  side  of  the  landing 
place  with  the  flick  of  a  quick-turned  oar,  and  got  out. 
In  a  moment  he  came  back,  having  read  the  stamped 
label  on  the  packing,  and  reported  the  gratifying  news. 

"Oh,  it's  too  thrilling,"  cried  Dora,  "to  think  that 
they  came  from  your  works.  Dad,  you're  a  perfect 
wizard  to  see  that,  and  guess  it  was  Per's.  You  must 
write  to  him  and  tell  him  that  his  ironwork  is  going  up 
in  Venice,  and  that  you  recognized  it  the  first  moment  you 
—  you  saw  the  Grand  Canal." 

Mr.  Osborne  gave  a  little  inward  tremolo  of  laughter. 

"Oh,  I'm  not  so  blind  yet,"  he  said,  "and  it's  seldom 
you  see  work  like  Per's.  There's  something,  as  you 
may  say,  so  individual  about  it.  God  bless  the  boy, 
how  he'll  like  to  hear  that  I  spotted  his  design  right 
across  the  Grand  Canal.  Eh,  he  might  have  been  here, 
my  dear,  and  studied  the  style  of  the  architecture,  when 
one  sees  how  it  fits  in  with  the  other  monuments.  I'll 
write  to  tell  him  that." 

Mr.  Osborne  remembered  that  Dora  had  told  him 
that  Venice  was  the  most  beautiful  place  in  the  world, 


THEOSBORNES  157 

and  the  Grand  Canal  the  most  beautiful  thing  in  Venice. 
And  he  made  a  concession  that  he  did  not  really  feel. 

"Not  but  what  he  hadn't  got  a  lot  to  compete  against," 
he  said.  "  That  bridge  now  ?  That's  a  fine  thing.  And 
the  curve  of  it  looks  built  for  strength.  I  warrant  there's 
no  iron  girder  made  that  would  cause  it  to  be  safer.  And 
the  houses,  beautiful,  I'm  sure!  But  I  don't  see  any 
that  I'd  sooner  take  than  the  Palazzo  Dandoli." 

Suddenly  Dora  felt  something  dry  up  inside  her.  That, 
at  any  rate,  was  how  she  mentally  phrased  the  sensation 
to  herself.  Her  father-in-law  was  kind  and  wise  and 
good;  he  was  anxious  to  please,  he  was  anxious  to  be 
pleased.  But  at  the  concession  —  for  so  she  felt  it  to 
be  —  that  Per  had  had  a  lot  to  compete  with,  when 
the  excruciating  iron  arcade  of  the  fish  market  was 
erected  within  stone-throw  of  the  Rialto  and  within  pea- 
shooting  distance  of  the  wondrous  canal,  she  felt  for  the 
moment  the  impossibility  of  herself  and  Mr.  Osborne 
being  together  at  Venice.  The  situation  was  one  that 
she  had  not  faced  without  a  tremor;  now,  for  the  moment, 
when  it  was  actual  and  accomplished,  it  was  inconceivable. 

But  this  mercantile  discovery  had  delighted  Mr. 
Osborne;  it  had  clearly  raised  his  previous  estimate  of 
Venice.  A  town  that  could  so  aptly  enshrine  this  design 
of  Per's  was  a  town  that  must  receive  the  best  attention. 
There  was  probably  more  in  it  than  he  had  been  at  first 
disposed  to  imagine.  He  gave  it  his  best  attention. 

A  gray  fussing  steamboat  going  seaward  on  the  tide 
and  raising  a  huge  wash  of  churned  water,  next  engaged 
his  admiration. 

"Well,  and  if  I  didn't  think  when  we  took  so  long  to 


158  THEOSBORNES 

get  to  the  Palazzo  last  night  that  the  Italians  would  be 
wiser  to  build  a  big  sea  wall  somewhere,  and  raise  the 
level  of  the  canal  so  as  you  could  drive  a  horse  and  carriage 
down  them ! "  he  said.  "  But  if  you've  got  a  ferry  steamer 
that  goes  the  pace  of  that  —  Lor',  my  dear,  how  it  makes 
us  rock  —  I  don't  see  what  there's  to  complain  of.  And 
calling  first  on  this  side  and  then  on  that,  same  as  they 
used  to  do  on  the  Thames,  what  could  you  ask  for  more 
convenient?" 

Again  Dora  had  to  enlist  her  sympathy  on  a  foreign  side. 

"I  know,"  she  said,  "and  they  go  right  out  to  the 
Lido,  where  we'll  go  and  bathe  this  very  afternoon,  Dad. 
It  will  be  awfully  hot  after  lunch,  so  we'll  join  the  steamer 
at  San  Marco,  and  send  the  gondola  out  to  meet  us  on  the 
Lido,  and  take  us  back  when  it  gets  cooler.  One  gets 
roasted  in  a  gondola  on  the  lagoon  when  it's  as  hot 
as  this." 

Mr.  Osborne  was  clearly  a  little  troubled  at  this 
suggestion. 

"Ah,  no  doubt  there  are  sets  of  bathing  machines," 
he  said  at  length.  "A  dip  in  the  briny:  very  pleasant." 

Dora  did  not  at  once  grasp  the  cause  of  his 
embarrassment. 

"We'll  swim  right  out  together,"  she  said.  "You 
can  swim  for  ever  in  this  sea;  it's  so  buoyant.  And  then 
we  sit  on  the  sand  and  eat  strawberries,  while  the  sun 
dries  us  again." 

Then  she  saw  that  some  portentous  doubt  on  the  ques- 
tion of  propriety  was  in  Mr.  Osborne's  mind,  guessed  it, 
and  hastened  to  remove  the  cause  of  it.  "Or  perhaps, 
coming  straight  out  from  England,  you  don't  want  to 


THEOSBORNES  159 

bathe,"  she  said.  "Besides,  there's  the  mater"  —  she 
had  adopted  this  from  Claude.  "So  we  won't  bathe; 
we'll  take  her  out  for  a  giro  —  a  row  —  in  the  gondola 
and  have  tea  out  on  the  lagoon.  Dad,  you'll  love  the 
lagoon,  all  gray  and  green.  And  the  electric  light  poles 
cross  it  to  the  Lido." 

"Eh,  that  will  be  nice,"  said  Mr.  Osborne  quickly  and 
appreciatively.  "And  here's  another  bridge:  why, 
beautiful,  isn't  it?  I  think  I  like  it  better  than  that 
curved  one.  There  seems  more  sense  in  it.  You  don't 
have  to  mount  so  high." 

They  had  passed  round  the  last  corner  of  the  canal, 
and  in  front  of  them  lay  the  straight  lower  reach  of  it 
that  passes  into  the  great  basin  opposite  St.  Mark's  and 
the  Doge's  palace.  To  right  and  left  the  stately  houses 
stood  up  from  the  water  side,  in  glimmer  of  rose  and  blue 
and  orange  beneath  the  smiting  glory  of  the  noonday. 
Since  yesterday  the  north  wind,  blowing  lightly  from 
the  Alps,  had  banished  the  oppression  of  yesterday's 
heat  and  the  glitter  of  the  city  had  awoke  again,  pearly 
in  the  shadow  and  jewelled  in  the  sun.  And  in  the  imme- 
diate foreground  the  only  blot  of  disfigurement  was  the 
object  of  Mr.  Osborne' s  admiration,  the  flat,  execrable 
iron  bridge  opposite  the  Accademia.  There  it  lay, 
convenient  and  hideous  and  impossible.  And  he  liked 
it  better  than  the  curved  one!  It  had  more  sense  in  it! 

But  there  was  no  need  for  Dora  to  rack  her  brains  to 
find  some  response  which  should  steer  a  middle  way 
between  lack  of  cordiality  to  her  father-in-law  on  the  one 
hand  and  artistic  perjury  on  the  other.  Between  the 
fish  market,  the  iron  bridge,  and  the  vile  convenient 


i6o  THEOSBORNES 

speed  of  the  steamboats  Venice  was  going  up  in  his 
estimation  by  leaps  and  bounds,  and  he  was  delighted 
to  find  he  was  almost  able  to  endorse  Dora's  opinion  on 
the  town. 

"Well,  I  call  it  all  beautiful,  my  dear,"  he  said,  "and 
it's  as  I  said  to  mother.  ' Mother,'  I  said,  'if  Dora  says 
Venice  is  a  nice  place,  you  may  be  sure  there  is  something 
in  it,  and  we  were  right  to  come  out  and  have  a  look  at 
it  ourselves.'  But  who'd  have  thought  there  was  so 
much  of  modern  convenience  and  comfort?  And  these 
gondolas  too.  I'm  sure  I'm  as  comfortable  sitting  here 
as  in  my  own  brougham  and,  except  when  the  steamers 
go  by,  they  glide  as  smooth  as  on  an  asphalt  road. 
Pretty  the  water  is  too,  though  not  clear.  I  should  have 
thought  that  here  in  the  south  there'd  have  been  more 
of  blue  in  it.  But  I'm  a  bit  surprised,  my  dear,  that  you 
with  your  eye  for  colour  shouldn't  have  done  up  the  gon- 
dola more  brightly,  had  some  blue  curtains,  maybe,  or 
picked  out  that  handsome  carved  work  on  the  prow  with 
a  touch  of  red.  There's  a  thought  too  much  black  about 
it  for  my  taste.  Seems  to  tell  of  a  funeral,  almost." 

Dora  could  not  argue  about  this:  she  could  not  give 
Mr.  Osborne  eyes  which  should  see  the  value  of  the  black 
blots  of  boats  against  the  brightness  of  the  sky  mirrored 
in  the  canal.  But  it  was  easy  to  find  praise  in  his  speech 
to  which  she  could  respond,  though  the  praise  was 
expressed  in  a  way  that  somehow  set  her  teeth  on  edge. 

"Oh,  they  are  the  most  comfortable  things  in  the 
world,"  she  said,  "and  I  even  like  the  indignant  slap 
they  give  when  the  wash  of  the  steamer  crosses  them. 
Beautiful  thing,  with  its  arching  neck  like  some  great 


THEOSBORNES  161 

black  swan!  Ah,  there's  twelve  striking.  We  shall 
just  have  time  to  look  into  our  house  and  fetch  Claude 
and  then  get  back  to  the  Dandoli  for  lunch.  I  hope 
they'll  have  put  it  in  the  garden.  Oh,  Dad,  how  this  place 
has  got  into  my  heart !  You  never  did  such  a  nice  thing 
as  when  you  gave  Claude  and  me  a  month  here." 

Mr.  Osborne  did  not  think  much  of  Dora's  water- 
entrance  to  the  great  gray  palace  of  which  she  had  the 
first  floor,  but  the  size  of  the  huge  sola  (which  she  remem- 
bered to  tell  him  was  a  hundred  and  ten  feet  long)  was 
most  satisfactory  to  him.  But  with  its  polished  stone- 
plaster  floor,  and  the  Venetian  emptiness  of  it,  it  seemed 
to  him  rather  bare  and  comfortless. 

"Well,  I'm  sure  it's  a  handsome  room  enough  in  point 
of  size,"  he  said,  "and  in  this  hot  weather  it  looks  cool 
and  restful.  But  it  seems  strange  to  have  never  a  strip 
of  carpet  on  the  floor,  and  scarce  a  picture  on  the  walls. 
Lord,  my  dear,  don't  it  make  your  teeth  chatter  to  think 
of  coming  down  to  this  of  a  winter's  morning,  when  even 
now  it  strikes  so  cool?  But  isn't  there  some  Tintoret 
now,  my  dear,  that  you  could  fancy,  or  if  not  that,  half 
a  dozen  big  photographs  of  the  canal  and  the  bridge  you 
liked  so  much  to  hang  on  the  walls?  And  as  for  the 
Joor,  to  be  sure,  it's  a  big  job  to  cover  it,  but  a  proper 
carpet  for  that  end  of  it  where  you've  got  your  chairs 
and  table,  looking  out  over  the  canal,  you  shall  have, 
if  I  have  to  telegraph  to  town  for  one,  instead  of  those 
few  rugs,  or  mats  I  should  call  them.  Fancy  adver- 
tising this  as  a  house  to  be  let  furnished!  I  call  it 
misrepresentation . ' ' 

Dora  took  his  arm. 


162  THEOSBORNES 

"Oh,  Dad,  you  are  the  kindest  man  that  ever  was,'* 
she  said.  "But  indeed  I  want  neither  pictures  nor  a 
carpet,  though  it  is  darling  of  you  to  offer  me  them.  I 
like  it  empty:  it's  the  —  the  right  style  with  these  rooms. 
You  found  your  dining  room  rather  emptier  than  you 
liked,  you  know,  but  in  a  day  or  two  you  will  get  more 
than  used  to  it,  you  will  see  how  suitable  it  is.  And  I 
love  this  great  empty  room.  Now  we'll  just  go  into  the 
other  rooms,  and  then  we  must  get  back  for  lunch. 
Claude  seems  to  be  out:  I  expect  we  shall  find  him  at 
the  Dandoli." 

Lunch,  as  they  found  when  they  got  back,  had  been 
laid,  as  Dora  hoped,  in  the  garden,  in  the  centre  of  a 
gravelled  space  sheltered  from  the  sun  by  the  mellow 
brick  wall  and  a  clump  of  overarching  delicate-fingered 
acacia  trees,  and  made  cool  to  the  ear  by  the  plash  of 
the  fountain  into  its  marble  basin.  Down  the  sides 
and  at  the  corners  of  this  space  were  tubs  of  orange  trees, 
and  the  heaviness  of  their  drowsy  fragrance  mingling 
with  the  large  dilution  of  this  tide  of  warm  sea-scented 
air  was  translated  into  something  exquisitely  light  and 
vigorous.  Claude  had  already  arrived  and  was  waiting 
with  his  mother  for  them,  who  was  in  excellent  spirits. 

"Why,  dearest  Dora,"  she  said,  "here  we  are,  and 
ready  I'm  sure  for  lunch,  to  speak  for  myself,  though  it's 
not  gone  half-past  twelve  yet,  and  in  England  we  shouldn't 
be  sitting  down  for  another  hour.  And  Claude's  been 
telling  me  that  in  England  now  it's  not  gone  half-past 
eleven,  and  here  we  are  wanting  our  lunch  at  such  an  hour 
as  that.  Eh,  what's  that?  What  did  he  say  to  me? 
'Pronto,'  it  sounded  like." 


THEOSBORNES  163 

Guiseppe,  the  smiling  Italian  butler,  had  approached 
Mr.  Osborne,  and  said  exactly  that. 

"Yes,  pronto"  said  Dora,  "it  means  'ready.' " 

Mrs.  Osborne  beamed  back  at  Guiseppe. 

"And  I'm  pronto,  too,"  she  said.     "Let's  sit  down." 

"Mrs.  O.  will  be  having  the  whole  Italian  language 
by  heart  before  the  week's  out,"  said  her  husband.  "And 
such  a  morning  as  I've  had  with  Dora,  mother.  Bridges 
and  canals  and  steamers  and  churches.  Ah,  and  you'd 
never  guess,  so  I'll  tell  you  without  teasing  you!  They 
are  rebuilding  the  fish  market  with  arcades  of  iron  pillars, 
very  handsome,  and  who  do  you  think  supplies  them? 
Osborne,  Sheffield,  and  no  other,  my  dear,  and  it's  Per's 
No.  2,  light  arcade,  same  as  is  in  the  showroom,  or  I'm 
the  more  mistaken." 

Mrs.  Osborne  was  as  delighted  as  her  husband. 

"I'll  get  a  photograph  of  that  this  very  afternoon," 
she  said,  "if  there's  such  a  thing  as  a  photograph  shop  in 
Venice.  Dora,  my  dear,  have  they  a  photograph  shop 
in  Venice,  or  hasn't  that  got  here  yet  ?  " 

Dora  threw  back  her  head,  laughing. 

"Oh,  mother,  how  divine  of  you!"  she  said.  "Con- 
sidering I  sent  you  literally  hundreds  of  picture  post 
cards  when  Claude  and  I  were  here  in  the  autumn ! " 

"To  be  sure  you  did,  my  dear,"  said  Mrs.  Osborne 
cordially.  "And  it  had  gone  clean  out  of  my  poor  head. 
So  a  photograph  of  the  fish  market  I'll  send  to  Per  this 
very  afternoon,  if  I  have  to  turn  over  all  their  scrapbooks 
for  it.  Mr.  O.,  you'll  never  manage  macaroni  that  way. 
Wrap  it  round  your  fork,  my  dear,  as  you  see  Claude 
doing,  and  in  it  goes  without  any  bother." 


164  THEOSBORNES 

"Well,  mother,  you're  not  so  much  of  a  hand  at  it 
yourself,"  observed  Mr.  Osborne  in  self-defence.  "If 
I'm  to  take  pattern  by  Claude,  you  take  pattern  by  Dora. 
Now,  I  call  that  an  excellent  dish.  You  couldn't  have 
it  better  done,  not  in  your  own  house.  What  does  he 
say  to  me,  Dora,  my  dear?  Banke,  is  it?" 

"Bianco"  said  Dora,  "white.  Will  you  have  white 
wine  or  red?" 

"That's  another  word  for  Mrs.  O.,"  said  her  husband. 
"I  told  you  she'd  get  it  all  off  by  heart  in  no  time.  Yes, 
I'll  have  a  go  at  the  bianco.  One  wants  something  light 
and  cool  on  a  morning  like  this,  especially  if  the  true 
time  is  only  half -past  eleven." 

"I  declare  it  makes  me  feel  quite  greedy,"  said  Mrs. 
Osborne,  "but  such  an  appetite  as  I  have  to-day  I  haven't 
had  since  the  middle  of  April.  And  what  else  have 
you  seen  this  morning,  Mr.  Osborne?  Give  an  account 
of  the  sights,  my  dear,  or  I  shall  think  you've  had  no 
eye  except  for  Dora." 

They  waited  in  the  cool  greenness  of  the  garden  till 
the  heat  of  the  day  began  to  abate,  and  then  went  all 
together  in  one  gondola,  at  Mrs.  Osborne' s  particular 
wish,  to  begin  the  sights  of  Venice.  It  was  in  vain  that 
Dora  suggested  that  everybody  would  be  much  more 
comfortable  if  they  took  two  gondolas,  and  arranged 
their  rendezvous,  for  Mrs.  Osborne's  heart  was  set  on  a 
family  party  and  she  wasn't  sure  that  she  would  trust 
Mr.  O.  with  Dora  alone  any  more  that  day.  So,  as  badin- 
age loomed  on  the  horizon,  Dora  hastily  and  completely 
withdrew  her  opposition,  and  they  all  four  squeezed 
into  one  gondola. 


THEOSBORNES  165 

The  plan  was  to  row  out  over  the  lagoon,  and  have 
tea  at  Santa  Rosa.  Tea  made  the  centre  of  the  afternoon, 
round  which  the  rest  appeared  to  be  grouped  in  the  minds 
of  the  Osbornes.  Then  they  were  to  return  to  Venice 
in  time  to  look  in  at  St.  Mark's,  and  loiter  in  the  piazza, 
where  Mrs.  Osborne,  it  was  hoped,  would  find  at  one  of 
the  photograph  shops  the  representation  of  the  fish  market 
on  which  she  had  set  her  heart.  Accordingly  the  labour- 
ing gondoliers  propelled  the  laden  craft  across  to  the 
little  island,  tied  up  to  the  bank,  and  procured  straw- 
berries from  the  fruit  farm  to  add  to  their  tea.  Mrs. 
Osborne  at  first  had  a  sort  of  vague  prejudice  against  them, 
for  abroad  it  was  impossible  to  tell  "who  hadn't  been 
touching  them,"  and,  it  is  to  be  feared,  it  was  only  because 
the  rest  of  the  party  found  them  remarkably  good  that 
she  joined  them.  But  she  was  charmed  with  their  picnic, 
and  saw  a  great  similarity  between  the  little  waterway 
of  the  island  and  the  Regent's  Park  Canal. 

They  dined  that  evening  at  Dora's  house  —  meals 
somehow  had  leaped  into  sudden  importance  and  pre- 
ponderance since  the  arrival  of  her  father-in-law  in 
Venice,  though  they  had  no  more  meals  than  usual  — 
and  Mrs.  Osborne  as  well  as  her  husband  was  voluble 
over  all  they  had  seen. 

"Just  to  think  that  all  the  floor  of  St.  Mark's  is  in 
marble!"  said  she.  "Why,  it  seems  almost  a  shame, 
doesn't  it?  I'm  sure  there's  not  a  cathedral  in  England 
that's  got  such  a  grand  floor,  and  St.  Mark's,  so  you  said 
—  didn't  you,  Dora?  —  was  only  Roman  Catholic?" 

"Well,  well,  mother,"  said  Mr.  Osborne,  "it's  the 
Church  of  the  country,  you  see,  just  as  the  English 


i66  THEOSBORNES 

Church  is  ours.  You'd  think  more  of  the  Roman,  if 
you'd  been  brought  up  to  it.  But  I'm  surprised  at  their 
letting  the  floor  get  into  that  state:  it  was  all  ups  and 
downs,  and  I'm  sure  I  scarcely  knew  where  I  should  be 
setting  my  foot  next.  So  dark  it  was,  too,  that  one 
couldn't  see  as  much  as  one  would  like.  If  I  were  them, 
I  should  send  for  some  good  English  architect  as  knows 
when  a  building's  safe,  and  when  it  isn't,  and  make  him 
cut  half  a  dozen  sensible  windows  somewhere,  or  perhaps 
take  down  one  of  them  domes,  and  put  in  a  glass  roof  to 
it  instead.  Five  domes  there  are,  for  I  counted  them, 
and  that's  beyond  all  reason." 

Dora  felt  that  this  was  too  much  for  her:  simply  she 
could  not  think  of  any  reply  whatever.  If  somebody 
proposed  putting  a  glass  dome  in  St.  Mark's,  what  answer 
was  possible?  But  there  was  no  need  for  one.  Mrs. 
Osborne  instantly  joined  in  again. 

"And  never  did  I  think  to  see  such  shops  in  Venice," 
she  said.  "Why,  there  was  electric  fittings  at  one  I 
passed,  beautiful  they  were,  with  nymphs  and  such-like 
holding  up  the  globes,  the  same  as  you  might  get  in  the 
most  superior  shops  in  town.  And  I  need  never  have 
brought  out  stationery  with  me,  for  there  was  a  stationer's 
there  as  I  could  have  bought  the  best  cream-laid  at. 
And  not  expensive  either,  if  you  recollect  that  a  lira  is 
but  tenpence,  though  its  strange  to  have  your  silver  coins 
worth  tenpence  instead  of  a  shilling.  It  wants  a  deal  of 
thinking  back  into  pounds  and  shillings." 

"They  seem  to  have  a  notion  of  building,  too,"  said 
Mr.  Osborne.  "I'm  sure  that  great  square  tower  they 
were  building  was  as  solid  a  piece  of  work  as  you  could 


THE    OSBORNES  167 

find  anywhere.  And  to  think  that  the  original  had 
stood  there  five  hundred  years.  How  it  takes  you  back!" 

Claude  nodded  at  Dora. 

"What  did  I  tell  you?"  he  said.  "Didn't  I  say  the 
mater  and  pater  would  like  Venice  near  as  much  as  you 
do?" 

"Yes,  dear,  you  were  quite  right,"  said  Dora,  with 
a  sort  of  despairing  acquiescence  in  even  this.  "And 
what  should  you  like  to  do  to-morrow,  Dad  ?"  she  asked. 

" Eh,  there's  more  yet  to  see,  is  there ? "  he  said.  "And 
to  think  that  I've  been  sight-seeing  all  day,  and  not 
finished  even  now!  Who  would  have  thought  there 
was  so  much  in  such  a  small  town?  Well,  my  dear, 
I'm  in  your  hands,  and  whatever  you  show  me  I'll  be 
bound  I  shall  like  it,  if  it  comes  up  to  the  sample  of  Venice 
we've  had  to-day.  And  what  says  Mrs.  O.  ?" 

"Well,  there's  all  the  pictures  we  haven't  seen  yet," 
said  she.  "Perhaps  Dora  would  take  us  to  see  the 
pictures  in  the  morning,  but  as  for  the  afternoon  I  want 
nothing  better  than  to  have  another  look  at  St.  Mark's 
and  do  a  bit  more  shopping,  and  perhaps  have  a  bit 
of  a  row  afterward,  for  I  declare  it's  a  pity  not  to  be 
out  up  till  it's  time  to  dress." 

The  next  three  or  four  days  were,  it  must  be  confessed, 
a  sort  of  nightmare  to  Dora,  for  she  took  Venice  too 
seriously  to  see  anything  humorous  in  what  she  had  to 
go  through.  She  took  them  to  the  Accademia,  and  the 
Paul  Veronese  of  the  "Marriage  of  Cana"  had  an  instant 
and  amazing  success  owing  to  its  size.  Mr.  Osborne 
doubted  if  it  would  have  got  into  the  picture  gallery 
at  Grote  at  all,  and  Mrs.  Osborne  had  no  doubt  whatever 


168  THEOSBORNES 

about  it;  she  saw  at  a  glance  that  it  would  not,  "without 
you  took  its  frame  off."  Other  pictures  pleased  for 
other  reasons:  the  "Procession  of  the  Cross,"  because 
St.  Mark's  and  the  Campanile  came  into  it ;  the  Tintoret 
of  the  "Adoration  of  the  Doges,"  because  St.  George 
was  sitting  by  the  Virgin,  and  he  was  an  English  saint. 
But  before  Titian's  "Assumption  of  the  Virgin"  (a 
picture  which,  unfortunately,  Dora  detested)  criticism 
with  regard  to  its  dimensions  and  even  appreciation  was 
mute,  and  its  size  and  frame  passed  without  remark. 
Mrs.  Osborne's  eyes  filled  with  dear,  heart-felt  tears, 
and  Mr.  Osborne  said,  "Lor',  Maria,  it  was  worth  coming 
to  Venice  for  to  see  this  alone,  my  dear.  Well,  now, 
they  could  paint  in  those  days!"  And  immediately 
thereon,  he  bought  an  enormous  copy  of  it,  vilely  executed, 
which  an  elderly  English  lady  was  just  finishing  with  an 
uncertain  strippling  touch.  She  explained  in  quavering 
tones  that  she  was  obliged  to  charge  very  high  for  her 
copies  because  she  spent  weeks  in  study  before  she  began 
to  paint,  in  getting  at  the  spirit  of  the  original.  And 
Mr.  Osborne's  alacrity  in  securing  her  work  no  doubt 
made  her  wish  that  she  had  charged  higher  yet  for  the 
spiritual  tension  required  for  its  production. 

On  another  day  they  went  to  San  Rocco,  for  Mr. 
Osborne  found  to  his  amazement  that  it  was  impossible 
to  see  all  the  pictures  in  Venice  in  one  "go,"  even  if  you 
spent  the  whole  morning  at  it.  This  seemed  strange, 
since  you  could  see  the  whole  of  the  Royal  Academy  in 
a  less  time.  But  the  remedy  was  simple.  Why  not 
build  a  new  picture  gallery,  hang  all  the  pictures  in  Venice 
there,  charge  two  lire,  and  have  them  all  catalogued  in 


THEOSBORNES  169 

one  book  ?  That  was  the  kind  of  suggestion  that  cornered 
Dora:  it  seemed  scarcely  worth  while  to  say  that  many 
were  in  the  churches,  and  that  it  would  be  a  pity  to  move 
them  since  they  were  painted  for  the  places  which  they 
occupied.  But,  trying  to  be  patient  and  kind,  she  did 
say  so,  and  Mr.  Osborne  was  fired  with  the  brilliant 
thought  of  having  copies  made  for  the  churches.  Claude 
thought  this  an  excellent  idea.  "The  Gov.'s  hit  the 
nail  on  the  head  this  time,"  he  said,  and  was  surprised 
when  Dora,  turning  aside,  said,  "Oh,  Claude!"  to  him. 
But  apart  from  the  pictures  at  San  Rocco,  which  did  not 
have  a  great  success,  the  visit  was  memorable  because 
Mrs.  Osborne  said  "Bon  giorno"  to  the  custodian,  just 
as  if  she  did  it  every  day  of  her  life.  He  understood 
perfectly,  and  made  a  suitable  reply  about  the  loveliness 
of  the  day.  That  was  a  little  beyond  Mrs.  Osborne,  so 
she  said  "Grazie,"  and  her  husband  admiringly  com- 
mented, "Lor',  you  speak  it  like  a  native!  I  told  you 
the  mother  would  have  it  by  heart  in  no  time,"  he  said. 

On  this  morning  they  had  still  an  hour  to  spare  before 
lunch,  since  the  Tintorets  were  not  interesting  or  beautiful, 
and  they  rowed  across  to  the  Giudecca  to  see  a  garden. 
The  garden  was  fairly  appreciated,  though  to  Mrs. 
Osborne' s  mind  the  borders,  where  the  southern  June 
was  rioting,  were  not  quite  so  trim  as  she  would  have 
had  them;  but  the  great  sugar  factory  was  found  to  be 
most  attractive,  and  Mr.  Osborne  was  much  surprised 
to  find  that  Dora  did  not  know  whether  it  was  possible 
to  see  over  it  or  not.  However,  Claude  made  inquiries, 
and  found  it  could  be  shown.  He  took  his  father  there 
next  day,  and  they  were  late  for  lunch.  But  Mrs.  Osborne 


i7o  THE    OSBORNES 

and  Dora  were  late  too:  they  had  been  ordering  a  very 
handsome  gilt  frame  for  the  copy  of  "The  Assumption," 
and  the  "pattern"  on  it  wanted  a  lot  of  choosing. 

Dora  and  Claude  dined  that  night  at  the  Dandoli,  and 
Mr.  Osborne  announced  that  he  and  the  mother  had 
settled  to  stay  on  another  week,  for  they  were  both 
thoroughly  delighted  with  Venice. 

"And  its  grateful  to  you,  my  dear,  that  we  both  are," 
said  Mr.  Osborne,  "for  telling  us  about  it,  and  making 
us  feel  as  how  we  should  like  to  see  it.  There's  fifty 
different  things  in  Venice  I  should  like  to  see  a  score  of 
times,  and  if  we're  spared,  my  dear,  we'll  spend  another 
month  next  year  as  per  this  sample." 

Now  Dora  did  her  best  when  this  little  speech  was 
made,  but  Sirocco  had  been  blowing  all  day,  and,  as 
usual,  it  had  made  her  feel  rather  jerky  and  irritable. 
Also,  it  must  be  remembered,  Mr.  Osborne,  with  the 
best  and  most  appreciative  intention  in  the  world,  had, 
as  may  be  conjectured  from  the  foregoing  details  of  their 
days,  succeeded  in  spoiling  everything  for  her.  Who 
could  look  at  and  enjoy  a  picture  while  he  was  wondering 
why  Tintoret  hadn't  given  St.  John  something  more  on, 
or  feel  the  magic  of  the  approach  across  the  lagoon  when 
Mrs.  Osborne  said  that  the  gray  shining  mud-flats  called 
to  mind  the  Fal  below  Truro  at  low  tide,  and  Mr.  Osborne 
confirmed  the  accuracy  of  this  impression?  But  Maria 
had  such  an  eye  for  likenesses. 

In  consequence,  Dora  had  a  little  failed  in  cordiality 
of  tone  on  the  receipt  of  the  news,  for  by  this  plan  they 
would  leave  Venice  all  together,  and  every  day  till  their 
departure  would  be  taken  up  with  these  nightmare 


THEOSBORNES  171 

excursions,  for  it  was  part  of  the  plan  that  they  should 
do  everything  together.  Her  words,  whatever  they  were, 
had  been  expressive  of  delight  at  their  remaining,  but 
Claude,  at  any  rate,  had  noticed  the  failure  in  tone,  and 
on  their  way  back  after  dinner  he  spoke  about  it  in  kindly 
fashion,  but  so,  it  seemed  to  Dora,  with  a  matchless 
awkwardness. 

" Sorry  you're  a  bit  off  colour,  dear,"  he  said.  "I  know 
Sirocco  always  makes  you  feel  like  that." 

Dora  saw  the  obviously  tactful  intention ;  her  conscience 
also  a  little  accused  her,  and  she  knew  quite  well  what  he 
had  in  his  mind  and  was  probably  going  to  say. 

"Feel  like  what?"  she  said,  though  she  knew  this  to 
be  useless  fencing. 

"Oh,  feel  like  what  you  felt  when  you  said  you  were 
so  glad  the  pater  and  mater  were  going  to  stop  here. 
I  don't  say  that  they  noticed,  but  I  did.  I  expect  I'm 
quicker  than  them  at  feeling  what  you  feel.  What 
you  said  was  right  enough;  it  was  just  the  way  you 
said  it." 

He  learned  forward  in  his  seat  a  little,  looking  her  full 
in  the  face.  And  somehow  the  sight  of  him  and  the 
proximity  failed  for  once  to  make  themselves  felt.  His 
presence  did  not  mitigate  what  he  said,  or  stamp  it  with 
the  old  magic. 

"I  wish  you  would  explain,"  she  said. 

"As  if  there  was  any  need,  darling,"  he  said.  "As 
if  you  don't  understand  as  well  as  I  do.  You  said  you 
were  delighted  they  were  stopping,  but  only  your  voice 
said  it.  What's  wrong?  There's  something  up.  And 
I  thought  we  were  having  such  jolly  days  together.  Father 


i72  THE    OSBORNES 

and  mother  are  enjoying  it  ever  so  much,  and  if  they 
pretend  they  find  it  just  a  shade  more  delightful  than 
they  really  do,  why,  it's  just  to  please  you,  and  make 
you  feel  it's  a  success  that  they  do  it.  They  settled  to 
stop  on,  I  believe,  just  for  that." 

This  made  matters  no  better.  Dora  felt  she  ought 
to  be  delighted  they  were  doing  so,  and  ought  to  be 
touched  and  pleased  with  the  reason  Claude  had  con- 
jectured. But  she  was  not:  Venice,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
or  rather  these  days  of  Venice,  were  being  spoiled  for 
her.  She  would  as  soon,  as  Claude  had  once  said  to 
her,  though  with  inverted  meaning,  have  spent  them  at 
Clapham  Junction  if  the  Osbornes  were  to  be  with  her. 
It  was  a  great  pity  that  they  should  stop  on,  if  their  motive 
in  doing  so  was  to  gratify  her.  She  hoped  it  was  not  that. 

"  Oh,  I  don't  think  that  is  it,  Claude,"  she  said.  "  Dad 
likes  —  likes  the  sun  and  the  —  oh,  lots  of  things,  Stucki's 
sugar  factory  for  instance,  and  your  mother  likes  the 
pigeons  and  the  shops.  But  it  isn't  Venice  they  like." 

"That's  just  what  I  say,"  said  he,  "they  stop  to  make 
you  think  they  do.  They  think  the  world  of  you,  you 
know." 

"Yes,  the  darlings,"  said  Dora  quickly.  "That  — 
that  makes  it  so  pathetic." 

"Pathetic?  You  mean  that  you  don't  think  so  highly 
of  them?" 

Dora's  heart  suddenly  sank.  She  had  not  meant 
that:  she  had  meant  only  that  it  was  a  pity  they  stayed 
in  Venice  to  please  her,  when  in  reality  she  was  not  enjoy- 
ing their  stay.  She  knew  well  that  they  were  out  of 
place  in  Venice  ...  it  was  hopeless  to  try  to  explain. 


THEOSBORNES  173 

But  even  if  she  had  meant  the  other,  it  would  have  been 
a  fatal  error  on  Claude's  part  to  put  it  into  words.  He 
called  this  kind  of  frankness  "getting  at  the  bottom 
of  the  thing."  She  felt  he  was  certain  to  use  that  phrase 
now.  He  did  so. 

"Let's  get  at  the  bottom  of  it,  dear,"  he  said,  "and 
as  we  always  do,  I  shall  speak  my  mind,  just  like  you. 
Perhaps  it  will  sound  harsh  to  you:  I'm  sorry  if  it  does." 

He  leaned  back  again,  but  without  looking  at  him 
she  could  see  that  he  tilted  his  head  back,  and  put  his 
chin  a  little  out,  the  identical  gesture  which  before  she 
had  found  so  attractive,  so  fascinating,  even.  She  had 
told  him  so,  too,  a  hundred  times:  had  said  she  loved  a 
man  to  know  his  mind,  to  be  firm  and  decided,  especially 
with  those  he  loved  best.  No  doubt  he  remembered 
that  at  this  moment:  perhaps  even  he  was  doing  it  con- 
sciously or  at  least  half-consciously,  so  as  to  present  what 
he  had  to  say  in  the  most  attractive  guise.  But,  suddenly 
and  disconcertingly,  she  found  the  gesture  scarcely  less 
than  odious. 

"I  think  the  pater's  been  awfully  good  to  you,  dear," 
he  said.  "He's  done  a  lot  for  you,  given  you  all  sorts 
of  things  you  had  no  reason  to  expect.  There's  this 
month  in  Venice,  to  go  no  further  than  that.  Well,  it 
will  stand  him  in  a  pot  of  money,  and  it's  just  because  he 
doesn't  grudge  you  one  penny  of  it  that  I  think  you  ought 
to  feel  rather  more  cordial  to  him  about  their  stopping. 
I  don't  say  that  you  behaved  not  cordially,  because  I 
think  what  you  said  was  all  right,  and  neither  of  them 
noticed  that  anything  was  awry,  but  you  hadn't  got  the 
right  feelings  to  back  up  your  tongue.  Wait  a  moment. 


i74  THEOSBORNES 

I've  not  finished;  there's  something  more  yet,  but  I 
want  to  find  words  that  won't  hurt  you,  and  yet  will 
express  what  I  mean." 

There  was  something  in  this  that  roused  a  certain  sense 
in  Dora  that  she  knew  had  been  often  present  in  her  mind, 
but  which  she  hoped  would  always  remain  dormant. 
But  now  it  began  to  awake ;  his  words,  kind  as  they  were, 
implied  an  impossible  attitude.  He  was  judging,  so  it 
seemed  to  her,  making  himself  jury  and  judge  all  rolled 
into  one,  and  it  was  understood  that  she,  put  in  the  dock 
before  him,  would  make  no  defence.  He  knew  that  he 
was  right  —  that  was  what  it  came  to  —  and  was  going 
to  tell  her,  as  kindly  as  possible,  what  was  right.  And 
on  the  instant  she  found  herself  refusing  to  be  judged 
and  condemned  by  his  standards.  He  did  not  know 
what  Venice  meant  to  her,  or  how  essentially  his  father's 
attitude  toward  the  things  and  the  place  that  she  loved 
jarred  on  her.  And  unfortunately  the  affair  was  typical 
of  hundreds  of  other  affairs.  That  Mr.  Osborne  had 
no  artistic  sense  of  any  sort  or  kind  did  not  matter,  but 
what  was  beginning  to  matter  was  that  Claude,  who 
apparently  could  not  see  that  the  entire  absence  of  it 
in  a  person  with  whom  she  was  brought  into  day-long 
contact  made  something  rather  hard  to  bear,  had  put 
on  his  wig  and  was  going  to  sum  up  on  a  matter  about 
which  he  knew  nothing.  Her  behaviour  had  never 
broken  down;  he  had  said  that  himself,  and  she  believed 
it  to  be  true ;  the  matter  was  that  he  could  not  understand 
that  she  had  to  struggle  against  the  disappointment  of 
spoiled  days,  and  was  yet  serenely  confident  that  he  had 
the  complete  data. 


THEOSBORNES  175 

"Don't  mind  about  hurting  me,"  she  said  quickly. 
"I  want  you  to  say  exactly  what  you  feel. " 

They  had  arrived  at  the  water-gate  of  their  home,  with- 
out her  noticing  it,  and  Giovanni  was  already  standing, 
hat  in  hand,  to  give  her  the  support  of  his  arm  on  to  the 
steps,  which  were  slippery  with  the  receding  tide.  Claude 
was  conscious  of  this  first:  he  was  quite  conscious,  also, 
of  Dora's  tone. 

"Not  before  the  servants,"  he  said.  "Get  out, 
dear,  and  take  Giovanni's  arm.  The  steps  are 
like  ice!" 

Again  Dora  was  in  revolt:  it  seemed  to  her  that  he 
was  advising  her  against  a  thing  he  might  have  done 
himself,  but  which  she  could  not  have  dreamed  of.  She 
had  been  absorbed  in  this  —  this  dispute  was  it  ?  — 
had  not  noticed.  He  had  noticed,  and  warned  her 
against  an  impossible  thing. 

Giovanni  unlocked  the  door  for  them,  received  orders 
for  the  next  day,  and  they  went  up  the  stairs  together  in 
silence.  And  as  they  went  up  all  the  womanhood  in 
Dora  —  and  there  was  much  of  it,  and  it  was  all  sweet  and 
good  —  rose,  flooding  for  the  time  the  bitter  gray  mud 
flats  that  had  appeared.  And  at  the  top  of  the  stairs  she 
turned  to  him. 

"Oh,  Claude,"  she  said,  "we're  not  quarrelling, 
are  we?" 

,  "Takes  two  to  make  a  quarrel,"  he  said,  "and  I'm 
not  one.  But  I  want  to  say  something  yet,  and  I  think 
you'd  better  hear  it.  I  ask  you  to,  in  fact." 

She  unpinned  her  hat,  and  led  the  way  to  the  end  of 
the  big  sola  that  overlooked  the  canal.  She  sat  down 


176  THEOSBORNES 

in  her  accustomed  chair,  flinging  the  window  open,  for 
the  night  was  very  hot. 

"Say  it  then,"  she  said. 

Again  Claude's  head  went  back:  he  felt  perfectly 
certain  he  was  right. 

"Well,  it's  just  this.  You've  told  me  not  to  choose 
my  words,  so  I  won't  bother  to  do  so.  You  haven't 
felt  right  toward  the  pater  and  mater  all  this  time  here. 
When  he  wanted  to  go  and  see  a  factory,  you  wondered 
at  him  —  and,  yes,  you  despised  him  a  bit  for  it.  When 
he  admired  some  picture  you  didn't  think  much  of,  you 
wondered  again.  Now,  he  never  wondered  at  you. 
If  you  wanted  to  sit  half  an  hour  before  some  adoring 
Doge,  he  never  wondered,  any  more  than  I  wonder, 
for  there  are  lots  of  people  in  the  world,  and  they've  got 
their  different  tastes  and  every  right  to  them.  But  he 
only  said  to  himself:  'Gosh,  there's  something  there, 
and  she's  right,  only  I  don't  know  what  it  is  she's  looking 
at.'  He  never  thought  you  wanting  in  perception  because 
you  didn't  admire  the  iron  in  the  fish  market.  He  only 
thought  to  himself,  'Let's  go  and  see  something  this 
afternoon  that  Dora  does  like.'  How  often  has  he  gone 
to  the  National  Gallery  in  London?  Never,  you  bet: 
he  doesn't  know  a  picture  from  a  statue.  And  how 
often  has  he  gone  to  look  at  some  mouldy  old  Titian  here, 
because  you  thought  it  worth  a  look?  Well,  isn't  that 
anything?  It's  no  use  you  and  me  not  saying  things 
straight  out,  and  so  I  say  it  straight  out.  He's  been 
boring  himself  fit  to  burst  over  your  Botticellis,  and  been 
trying  to  admire  them,  saying  this  was  the  biggest  picture 
he'd  ever  seen,  and  this  was  the  smallest.  And  yet  dear 


THEOSBORNES  177 

old  Dad  wasn't  boring  himself,  because  he  was  with 
you,  and  trying  to  take  an  interest  in  what  you  showed 
him.  Well  then,  I  ask  you!" 

There,  close  in  front  of  her,  was  the  beautiful  face, 
the  beautiful  mouth  which  she  loved,  saying  things  which, 
as  far  as  they  went,  her  essential  nature  entirely  approved. 
But  at  the  moment  his  beauty  did  not  move  her.  And 
the  account  he  had  given  was  correct:  she  had  been 
having  on  her  nerves  the  fact  that  Mr.  Osborne  took 
more  pleasure  in  the  steamboats  than  in  San  Rocco,  in 
the  fish  market  than  in  the  Frati.  He  might  be  right :  she 
might  be  right,  but  in  any  case  the  attitudes  were  incom- 
patible. And  Claude  at  the  moment  clearly  took  up 
the  attitude  that  was  incompatible  with  hers.  There 
was  much  more,  too,  he  did  not  see :  he  did  not  see  that 
indifference  on  Dora's  part  did  not  destroy  his  father's 
pleasure  in  the  speed  of  the  steamboats,  whereas  his 
artistic  criticims  blackened  her  pictures  for  her. 

And  then,  womanlike  again,  she  knew  only  that  Claude 
was  her  man,  that  he  was  beautiful,  that  he  loved 
her  .  .  . 

"I  dare  say  I  am  quite  wrong,"  she  said.  "I  dare 
say  you  are  quite  right.  Shall  we  leave  it,  then,  darling? 
I  will  try  —  I  will  try  to  do  better.  I  am  sorry." 

"And  there  speaks  my  darling  girl,"  said  Claude. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  stay  in  Venice  had  naturally  curtailed  for  Mrs. 
Osborne  the  weeks  of  her  London  season,  but 
she  had  never  intended  to  begin  entertaining  on  the  scale 
required  by  the  prodigious  success  of  the  fancy-dress 
ball  last  year  till  after  Whitsuntide.  Before  leaving 
town  in  May  she  had  sent  out  all  invitations  for  the 
larger  functions  (except  those  which  her  invited  guests 
subsequently  asked  for  on  behalf  of  their  friends,  and 
which  she  always  granted),  and  it  was  clear  that  the 
world  in  general  was  going  to  pass  a  good  deal  of  its  time 
at  No.  92.  Indeed,  when  she  went  through  her  engage- 
ment book  on  her  return  from  Venice  to  Grote,  hos- 
pitable though  she  was,  and  greatly  enjoying  the  exer- 
cise of  that  admirable  virtue,  she  was  rather  appalled 
at  the  magnitude  of  what  she  had  undertaken.  She  was 
going  to  give  three  balls  (real  balls),  three  concerts,  two 
big  dinner  parties  every  week,  and  a  series  of  week-ends 
down  at  Grote,  while  on  such  other  nights  as  she  was  not 
dining  out  herself  there  were  a  series  of  little  parties. 
In  addition  Sheffield  friends  coming  to  stay  with  them 
for  the  insides  of  weeks  to  finish  up  with  one  of  the 
Grote  week-ends.  These  visits  she  looked  forward  to 
with  peculiarly  pleasant  anticipations,  for  the  dear  soul 
could  not  but  feel  an  intense  and  secret  gratification  at 
the  thought  of  such  local  celebrities  as  Sir  Thomas  and 
the  Prices  seeing  her  and  Mr.  O.  absolutely  at  the  top 

178 


THEOSBORNES  179 

of  the  tree,  and  entertaining  princes  and  duchesses 
and  what  not  just  as  they  had  entertained  aldermen  and 
manufacturers  at  Sheffield.  Also  there  was  a  secret  that 
Mr.  Osborne  had  told  her,  which  filled  her  with  feelings 
that  were  almost  too  solemn  to  be  glee.  The  secret  was 
not  to  be  talked  about  yet,  but  in  private  he  no  longer 
called  her  Mrs.  O.,  but  "  my  lady."  She  hoped  Sir  Thomas 
would  be  with  them  when  the  honours  were  published, 
for  secretly  she  still  took  her  bearings,  so  to  speak,  by 
the  stars  as  they  appeared  in  Sheffield.  There  Sir  Thomas 
Ewart,  Bart.,  and  Lady  had  been  the  very  Pole-star  to 
which  quite  important  constellations  reverently  pointed. 
But  now,  as  by  some  new  and  wonderful  telescope,  she 
saw  herself  and  Mr.  O.  high  above  Sir  Thomas.  Why, 
even  Per  would  be  the  Honourable  Per,  and  Sir  Thomas 
would  have  to  say,  "  After  you,  Per,  my  boy."  She  and 
Mr.  O.  had  already  had  more  than  one  broken  night 
in  thinking  of  a  title  which  he  could  submit  for  approval. 
Mrs.  Osborne  was  all  for  something  old  and  territorial. 

"There's  Hurstmonceaux,  my  dear,"  she  said,  "that 
ruined  old  castle  which  we  drove  over  to  see  when  you  was 
down  at  Hastings  with  your  attack  of  gout.  I  don't 
doubt  you  could  buy  it  for  a  song,  and  there  you'll  be. " 

"And  then  next  you'd  be  wanting  me  to  do  up  the 
Castle  and  live  in  it,"  said  he.  "Besides,  it's  a  regular 
stumper  to  say,  and  French  at  that.  No,  my  dear,  we 
must  think  of  something  more  British  than  that;  there's 
plenty  of  good  names  without  crossing  the  Channel,  so 
to  speak,  for  something  to  call  yourself  by.  But  it's 
puzzling  work,  and  new  to  me,  to  have  to  think  of  chris- 
tening yourself  afresh." 


i8o  THEOSBORNES 

"Lor',  Mr.  Osborne,  you  don't  mean  to  say  that  you've 
got  to  change  your  Christian  name,  too?" 

"No,  no,  my  dear.  There's  no  Christian  name  to 
bother  about;  I  don't  deal  any  more  in  Christian  names 
—  not  officially,  anyhow." 

He  blew  out  the  light. 

"  Good  night,  my  dear,"  he  said.  "  And  God  bless  you." 

It  was  all  very  well  to  say  "Good  night,"  but  Mrs. 
Osborne  could  no  more  sleep  than  she  could  think  of  a 
name.  After  an  interval  she  heard  Mr.  Osborne  turn 
himself  ponderously  round  in  his  bed,  and  knew  that  he 
was  awake  too. 

"There's  some  things  called  'Hundreds,'"  she  said. 
"I  seem  to  remember  that  all  England  is  cut  up  into 
Hundreds,  which  is  a  queer  thing  to  think  upon.  It'll 
be  worth  while  seeing  in  what  Hundred  the  East  End  of 
Sheffield  lies." 

"There's  something  in  that,"  said  Mr.  Osborne, 
"and  it  would  bring  the  business  into  it.  Lor',  Mrs. 
Osborne,  my  lady,  I'm  glad  I  had  nothing  to  say  to  a 
knighthood  five  years  ago.  I'd  have  been  put  on  the 
shelf  for  good  it  I'd  jumped  at  it.  But  not  I!  It's 
this  parliamentary  business  coming  on  top  of  all  I  did  at 
Sheffield  that  has  given  the  extra  turn.  And  I've  been 
liberal,  I'm  sure,  to  the  party.  What  was  the  name  of 
the  street  now  where  I  built  the  church  in  Sheffield? 
I  declare  it's  gone  out  of  my  head.  Thinking  of  new 
names  drives  the  old  ones  out." 

"Commercial  Road,  my  dear,"  said  Mrs.  Osborne, 
"for  I  thought  of  the  name  myself  when  you  was  build- 
ing the  street." 


THEOSBORNES  181 

"Then  we  ain't  no  further  on  yet.  Grote,  too;  that's 
not  to  be  thought  of,  as  it's  Lord  AustelFs  second  title." 

"After  all,  we  only  take  the  place  on  hire,"  said  Mrs. 
Osborne,  "and  it  doesn't  bring  the  business  in." 

"That's  what  beats  me,"  said  Mr.  Osborne.  "How 
to  bring  the  business  in!  Lord  Hardware,  Tinware; 
that  would  be  a  thing  to  laugh  at." 

The  matter  was  still  in  debate  on  that  morning  when 
Mrs.  Osborne  went  through  her  engagement  book 
down  at  Grote  and  found  so  heavy  a  programme  in  front 
of  her.  And  somehow  to-day  she  did  not  feel  markedly 
exhilarated  by  it.  The  journey  back  from  Venice  had 
tired  her  very  much,  and  though  she  had  felt  sure  that  a 
good  night's  rest  coupled  with  a  day  or  two  of  solid  Eng- 
lish food  would  set  her  up  again,  she  still  felt  overdone 
and  devitalized.  She  was  disposed  to  attribute  this  in 
the  main  to  the  unnutritious  character  of  Venetian  diet, 
where,  if  you  got  a  bit  of  veal  for  your  dinner,  that  was 
as  much  butcher's  meat  as  you  were  likely  to  see;  while, 
to  make  up,  there  would  be  nothing  more  than  a  slice 
of  some  unknown  fish  and  the  half  of  a  chicken  that  was 
no  bigger  than  a  blackbird.  As  for  a  nice  filet  of  beef 
or  a  choice  leg  of  lamb,  it  was  a  thing  unheard  of.  Yet 
she  had  not  felt  much  inclined  for  the  filet  of  beef  when 
it  was  accessible  again;  it  seemed  to  suit  her  as  little  as 
the  rice  and  maccaroni  had  done.  For  the  last  week, 
too,  she  had  had  from  time  to  time  little  attacks  of 
internal  pain.  No  doubt  it  was  of  no  consequence, 
but  it  was  a  pain  that  she  did  not  know  and  could  not 
quite  localize. 


i82  THEOSBORNES 

Once  or  twice  she  had  thought  of  consulting  a  doctor, 
a  thing  that  Mr.  Osborne  had  urged  on  her  before  the 
Venetian  visit,  but  some  vague  and  curious  fear  pre- 
vented her  —  the  fear  of  being  told  that  something  was 
seriously  wrong,  and  that  she  would  have  to  give  up 
their  London  programme  which  she  had  planned  so 
delightedly.  That  was  a  thing  not  to  be  contemplated; 
the  London  plans  were,  to  her  mind,  part  of  the  immutable 
order  of  things,  and  it  was  therefore  essentially  impor- 
tant that  Mr.  Osborne  should  not  guess  that  she  was  out 
of  sorts,  for  she  well  knew,  if  he  had  so  much  as  a  guess 
of  that,  he  would  have  carried  her  off,  by  force  if  neces- 
sary, and  not  let  go  of  her  till  he  had  deposited  her  in 
some  eminent  consulting  room,  with  specialists  dangling 
at  the  end  of  the  telephone.  But  she  had  never  been 
lacking  in  spirit,  and  it  would  be  a  singular  thing  if  she 
could  not  be  genial  and  hearty  to  all  the  world  for  a  few 
weeks  more. 

But  what  she  doubted  was  her  power  of  getting  through 
the  physical  strain  of  it.  She  knew  how  tiring  the  stand- 
ing about  and  the  receiving  was,  and  every  day  now  she 
felt  tired  even  before  the  fatigues  of  it  had  begun.  If 
only  she  had  a  daughter,  who  could  quite  naturally 
take  some  of  this  off  her  hands,  and  let  her  sit  down 
while  the  "company"  were  arriving.  And  then  an 
idea  struck  her. 

Dora  and  Claude  were  intending  to  occupy  the  flat 
in  Mount  Street  till  the  end  of  the  summer.  After  that 
they  would  come  down  to  Grote,  and  soon,  please  God! 
the  flat  in  Mount  Street  would  be  too  small  for  them 
"and  what  would  be  theirs"  —  this  elegant  circum- 


THEOSBORNES  183 

locution  was  exactly  the  phrase  that  passed  through  Mrs. 
Osborne's  mind  —  and  when  they  returned  to  London 
again  in  the  autumn,  it  would  be  to  a  house  of  their  own 
in  Green  Street  with  place  for  a  nursery.  This,  how- 
ever, they  were  only  going  to  take  at  Michaelmas;  but 
Dora  had  written  to  her  mother-in-law  this  very  morn- 
ing (and  her  innocent  letter  suggested  possibilities  to 
Mrs.  Osborne),  saying  that  Mount  Street  really  seemed 
to  be  hotter  than  Venice,  and  dreadfully  stuffy,  which 
Venice  was  not.  What  if  Dora  and  Claude  would  come 
and  live  with  them  in  Park  Lane  till  the  end  of  July? 
She  remembered  how  Dora  had  acted  hostess  down  at 
Grote  in  the  winter,  and  they  might  play  the  game  again. 
But  this  time  there  would  be  a  real  object  to  be  served 
by  it;  Dora  would  help  her  in  the  entertaining,  which 
prospectively,  as  she  planned  it,  had  seemed  so  delight- 
ful, but  now  appeared  so  difficult.  It  was  an  excellent 
idea,  if  only  she  could  compass  it. 

The  large  Indian  gong  had  already  boomed  through 
the  house,  announcing  that  lunch  was  ready,  and  next 
moment  Mr.  Osborne  came  into  her  "boudoir,"  announc- 
ing that  he  was  ready  too.  Venetian  habit  still  lingered 
with  him. 

"Well,  lunch  is  pronto,  my  lady,"  he  said,  "but  you're 
busy  yet,  and  still  at  the  plan  of  campaign  for  the  summer. 
But  in  your  plan  of  campaign  don't  forget  the  com- 
missariat; and  here's  your  lieutenant  Marie  come  to 
tell  you  that  my  lady  is  served.  Balls,  concerts,  dinners; 
dinners,  balls,  concerts;  my  lady  is  a  regular  Whiteley 
to  the  tlite:  she  gives  them  all  there's  to  be  had.  You'll 
be  pauperizing  the  dukes  and  duchesses,  my  dear;  they'll 


184  THEOSBORNES 

be  thinking  of  nothing  but  the  amusements  you  provide 
for  them." 

Mrs.  Osborne  was  not  without  the  rudiments  of  dip- 
lomacy, though,  it  may  be  remarked,  nothing  in  the  least 
advanced  in  that  line  was  necessary  with  her  husband. 
Still  it  was  better  that,  if  possible,  he  should  suggest  Dora 
and  Claude  coming  to  them  than  that  she  should.  She 
laughed  dutifully  at  Mr.  O.'s  joke  about  the  dukes  and 
duchesses,  and  proceeded. 

"I  had  a  note  from  Dora  this  morning,"  she  said,  as 
they  sat  down. 

"Bless  her  heart,"  said  Mr.  Osborne  parenthetically. 
"For  what  we  are  going  to  receive,  my  lady." 

"Amen,  my  dear.  There's  some  of  that  rice  with  bits 
of  chicken  in  it  as  I  got  the  recipe  of  from  Pietro,  and  I 
could  fancy  a  bit  myself.  Well,  she  wrote  and  said  she 
was  very  well,  and  she'd  seen  —  she'd  been  to  call  in 
Harley  Street." 

Mr.  Osborne  again  interrupted. 

"And  was  anything  said  about  September?"  he  asked. 

"There  was  some  mention  of  September.  And  there 
was  something  else,  too.  Oh  yes,  she  finds  that 
pokey  little  flat  in  Mount  Street  hotter  than  Venice, 
she  says." 

"Well,  then,  why  don't  she  and  Claude  take  a  cab 
round  to  No.  92,  and  let  the  luggage  follow?"  said  Mr. 
Osborne  rather  hotly.  "Claude's  not  got  a  grain  of  sense : 
he  should  have  thought  of  it  long  ago,  if  Dora  feels  it 
stuffy  and  hot  there,  and  suggested  their  installing  them- 
selves there,  cool  and  comfortable.  Bless  the  boy,  all 
the  same.  But  after  I've  had  my  lunch  I'll  get  one  end 


THEOSBORNES  185 

of  the  telephone  and  him  the  other,  and  see  if  you  don't 
hear  the  front  door  slam  and  them  drive  away  to  Park 
Lane  before  I've  lit  my  cigar.  That'll  suit  you,  my 
lady,  will  it?  You'll  like  to  have  them  dear  children 
in  the  house,  I  know." 

"Bless  them,  let  them  come,"  said  Mrs.  Osborne,  "and 
the  longer  they  stop  the  better  I  shall  be  pleased.  Dora 
will  be  a  help  too:  she  will  help  me  with  the  dinners 
and  what  not." 

The  two  were  alone  on  this  their  last  day  at  Grote,  but 
all  six  wasp-coloured  footmen  marshalled  by  Thoresby 
formed  a  sort  of  frieze  round  the  table,  occasionally  chang- 
ing a  plate  or  handling  a  dish.  Generous  though  he  was 
with  money,  Mr.  Osborne  had  very  distinct  notions  about 
getting  his  money's  worth  when  he  had  paid  it,  and  since 
the  house  required  six  footmen  he  saw  no  reason  why 
they  should  not  all  wait  at  table,  even  when  only  he  and 
Mrs.  O.  were  having  their  lunch.  Nor  was  the  num- 
ber of  dishes  curtailed  because  they  were  alone;  Mr. 
Osborne  always  ate  of  them  all,  and  because  there  was 
"no  company"  that  was  no  reason  why  he  should  go 
starved.  It  was  not,  therefore,  for  nearly  an  hour  after 
the  time  they  sat  down  that  he  went  to  the  telephone  — 
so  accurately  depicted  by  Sabincourt  —  and  rang  up 
Claude. 

He  joined  Mrs.  Osborne  on  the  terrace  a  minute  or  two 
afterwards. 

"Claude's  willing  enough,  and  thank  you,"  he  said, 
"but  he  says  he  must  speak  to  Dora  first.  So  you'd 
better  telephone  to  92,  my  lady,  and  tell  them  to  make 
ready  whatever  rooms  you  think  right.  Give  them  a 


186  THE   OSBORNE S 

nice  sitting-room,  my  dear,  so  that  they  can  feel  inde- 
pendent." 

"Better  hear  from  Dora  first,"  said  Mrs.  Osborne. 

"Just  as  you  please;  but  when  the  girl  says  as  the  flat 
in  Mount  Street  is  hot  and  stuffy,  and  there's  the  coolest 
house  in  London  waiting  for  her  just  round  the  corner, 
I  don't  see  there's  much  call  to  wait.  Well,  my  lady, 
I  must  be  off.  There's  a  committee  been  sitting  in  the 
Lords  on  the  Bill  about  the  Employers'  Liability  Act, 
and  I  must  get  all  they've  talked  about  at  my  fingers' 
ends.  Who  knows,  but  Mrs.  O.,  but  that  I'll  be  able  to 
tell  them  a  thing  or  two  in  that  chamber  before  the  sum- 
mer's out?  It's  a  strange  thing  to  me  how  clever  men, 
such  as  have  taken  degrees  and  fellowships  at  Oxford, 
should  have  so  little  common  sense  on  other  matters. 
As  if  there  wasn't  a  difference  between  one  sort  of  risk 
and  another,  and  they  want  to  lump  them  all  on  to  the 
employer.  I  doubt  most  of  them  Liberals  are  either 
Socialists  or  afraid  of  the  Socialists.  But  there!  the 
noble  lords  have  had  a  committee  and  I  must  see  what's 
been  said  and  done." 

"  Just  to  think  of  it!  And  have  you  got  any  idea  about 
your  new  name  yet  ?  " 

"No,  I  daresay  something  will  suggest  itself.  After 
all,  I  shall  smell  as  sweet  by  any  other  name,  hey?" 

"Lor',  my  dear,"  said  Mrs.  Osborne  with  a  slight 
accent  of  reproof;  for  Thoresby  had  come  to  see  if  there 
were  any  orders,  and  must  have  heard. 

The  question,  however,  about  this  move  of  Dora  and 
Claude  to  Park  Lane  was  not  so  foregone  a  conclusion  as 


THEOSBORNES  187 

Mr.  Osborne  had  anticipated.  Claude  had  gone  to  the 
telephone  when  he  was  rung  up,  and  came  back  beam- 
ing to  tell  Dora  of  this  delightful  offer. 

"Dad  and  the  mater  invite  us  to  go  to  Park  Lane  till 
the  end  of  July,"  he  said.  "I'm  blowed  if  there  are 
many  fathers  who  would  want  a  son  and  daughter-in- 
law  in  the  house  all  the  time.  Of  course  I  said  that  I 
must  consult  you  first;  that  was  only  proper." 

"Oh,  Claude,"  said  she,  "of  course  it's  awfully  kind. 
But,  but  do  you  think  so?" 

"But  why  not?  It's  just  like  the  governor  to  have 
guessed  that  we  should  feel  stuffy  and  cramped  in  the 
flat  during  this  hot  weather." 

Dora  remembered  her  letter. 

"I'm  afraid  I  may  be  responsible  for  that,"  she  said. 
"At  least  I  wrote  to  your  mother  yesterday  saying  it 
was  very  hot  and  airless  here.  Oh  dear,  I  hope  she 
won't  think  I  hinted  at  this." 

"Not  she.  You  don't  catch  her  imputing  motives, 
specially  when  there  weren't  any.  She's  got  more  to 
think  about  than  that.  I  say,  Dora,  are  you  sure  you 
didn't  have  that  in  your  mind?  Awfully  sharp  of  you 
if  you  did." 

Dora  resented  this;  indignant  that  he  could  have  sup- 
posed her  capable  of  it,  and  a  little  of  this  indignation 
coloured  her  words. 

"I'm  afraid  that  I  can't  lay  claim  to  sharpness,"  she 
said,  "because  the  fact  is  that  if  I  had  thought  such  an 
offer  was  possible,  I  should  have  said  it  was  cool  and 
airy  here." 

Claude's  profile  was  outlined  against  the  hot,  hard 


i88  THEOSBORNE6 

blue  of  the  sky  outside,  and  Dora  noticed  how  perfect 
it  was.  But  she  noticed  it  in  some  detached  sort  of  way; 
it  did  not  seem  to  concern  her.  At  this  he  turned  round, 
and  came  across  the  room  to  her. 

"What's  the  matter,  dear?"  he  said.  "Why  is  it  you 
don't  want  to  go?" 

"Oh,  Claude,  if  you  don't  see,  you  wouldn't  under- 
stand if  I  explained,"  she  said.  "And  I  can't  quite 
explain,  either." 

"Try,"  he  said. 

"Well,  I  married  you,  do  you  see,  and  you  are  master 
of  the  house,  and  I'm  mistress,  and  it  isn't  quite  the  same 
thing  if  we  go  and  live  with  other  people.  They  are 
angelic,  of  course,  to  suggest  it.  But  oh,  I  wish  people 
wouldn't  be  quite  so  kind  —  or,  rather,  that  they  would 
mix  a  little  tact  with  their  kindness.  They've  made  it 
hard  to  refuse,  telephoning  like  that.  It's  —  it's  like  a 
word-of-mouth  invitation  for  a  month  ahead.  You've 
got  to  say  'Yes." 

Claude  took  up  a  rather  listless  hand  of  hers  that  lay 
on  the  arm  of  her  chair. 

"Ah,  then  I  do  understand,"  he  said,  "and  I  love 
your  reasons.  I  guessed  it  before  you  said  it;  you  want 
to  be  alone  with  me.  Well,  it's  the  same  here.  But  I've 
no  doubt  they'll  give  us  a  sitting  room  and  all  that." 

Though  Dora  had  meant  something  very  like  that,  it 
sounded  rather  dreadful  to  hear  Claude  say  it,  and  say 
also  that  he  had  guessed.  He  oughtn't  to  have  guessed, 
although  he  assured  her  it  was  "the  same  here."  There 
was  an  unconscious  complacency  about  his  guessing 
that  she  did  not  like.  But  he  went  on  without  pause. 


THEOSBORNES  189 

"As  for  its  being  tactless,"  he  said,  "I  think  you're 
rather  hard  on  the  governor.  When  a  man's  as  kind 
as  he  can  be,  and  as  devoted  as  he  is  to  you,  I  don't  think 
you  should  say  that." 

Claude  stuck  out  his  chin  a  little  over  this,  and  Dora, 
though  she  knew  he  was  right  from  his  point  of  view, 
knew  that  she  had  been  right  too.  Kindness,  even  the 
most  sincere,  can  easily  be  embarrassing:  it  needs  refin- 
ing, like  sugar.  But  that  was  the  sort  of  thing  that 
Claude  could  not  understand:  the  tact  of  good  nature 
had  been  left  out  of  him  just  as  it  had  been  left  out  of  his 
father.  So  her  reply  was  sincere. 

"Yes,  dear;  it  was  a  pity  I  said  that,"  she  said. 

But  somehow  the  admission  was  bitter;  the  truth  was 
that  it  was  a  pity  to  say  it,  because  she  ought  to  have 
been  more  careful  in  what  she  said  to  him,  not  because 
the  impulse  that  prompted  her  speech  was  a  mistaken  one. 
But  all  that  was  unconjectured  by  him. 

"My  darling,"  he  said,  "you  are  so  sweet  with  me. 
If  I  have  to  criticise  anything  you  do,  you  never  take 
it  amiss.  And  now  I'll  tell  you  another  reason  why  I 
think  we  had  better  go,  apart  from  the  comfort  and  con- 
venience of  it.  It  is  that  I  don't  think  the  mater  is  very 
strong,  for  all  that  she  eats  so  heartily.  She  gets  very 
easily  tired,  and  she's  laid  down  a  programme  for  the 
next  six  weeks  which  might  well  knock  anybody  out. 
Now  it  would  be  awfully  good  of  you  if  you  would  help 
her  with  it." 

That  appealed  to  Dora  much  more. 

"Oh,  then,  let's  go,  let's  go,"  she  said.  "Telephone  at 
once.  No,  I  think  I  will.  I  think  Dad  would  like  me  to." 


THEOSBORNES 

"You  think  of  everything,"  he  said.  "I  hoped  you 
would  think  of  that.  He'll  be  so  pleased  at  your  tele- 
phoning. '8003  Lewes,'  you  know." 

Claude  had  a  meeting  at  Brentwood  that  afternoon 
and  had  to  leave  immediately,  taking  a  cab  to  the  station 
and  the  train  from  there,  so  that  Dora  might  use  the 
motor  if  she  wished.  He  felt  that  this  was  a  perfectly 
natural  and  ordinary  thing  to  do,  but  at  the  same  time 
he  had  to  tell  her  he  had  done  it. 

"It  takes  but  a  very  little  longer,"  he  said  in  answer 
to  her  urging  him  to  take  the  motor  himself,  "and  a  walk 
from  the  station  at  the  other  end  will  do  me  good.  I 
wish  I  was  going  to  prowl  about  with  you  all  afternoon. 
But  men  must  work,  you  know.  Though  when  I  come 
back  I  hope  I  shan't  find  that  you've  been  weeping. 
But  you  wouldn't  like  your  'Claudius  Imperator'  to  be 
a  drone.  Good-bye,  my  darling;  I  shall  be  back  in 
time  to  dine  and  take  you  to  the  play. " 

He  lingered  a  moment  still. 

"If  you  haven't  got  anything  special  to  do,  you  might 
go  down  to  Richmond  and  have  tea  with  Uncle  All,"  he 
said.  "He'd  like  it,  and  you  haven't  seen  him  for  some 
time." 

"Yes,  I'll  go  by  all  means,"  she  said. 

"Thanks,  dear.  You  see,  after  all,  he  gives  us  fif- 
teen thou.  a  year." 

Dora  ordered  the  motor,  and  set  off  on  her  drive  to 
Richmond  at  once.  The  day  was  exceedingly  hot,  and 
the  reverberation  of  the  sun  from  the  grilling  pavements 
struck  like  a  blow  when  she  went  out.  A  languid,  airless 


THEOSBORNES  191 

wind  raised  stinging  grit  from  the  wood  pavements,  and 
the  reek  of  the  streets  hung  heavy  in  the  air.  She  longed 
with  an  aching  sense  of  physical  want  for  the  soft,  dust- 
less  atmosphere  of  Venice,  the  cluck  and  ripple  of  its 
green  waterways,  and  with  no  less  an  ache  and  thirst  of 
the  spirit  for  all  that  those  things  had  once  symbolized  to 
her.  Yet  this  last  visit  had  not  been  the  rapturous  suc- 
cess of  the  one  before.  Venice  was  there  unchanged, 
with  the  gold  mist  of  romance  that  Claude  had  woven  for 
her  about  it,  but  he,  the  magical  weaver,  or  she,  the 
woman  for  whom  it  had  been  woven,  had  altered  some- 
how, and  perhaps  even  in  the  enchanted  city  a  certain 
vague  but  growing  trouble  that  was  in  her  mind  would  not 
be  completely  dissipated.  In  general  outline  she  knew 
what  it  was,  but  hitherto  she  had  not  focussed  her  vision 
on  it.  But  now  she  felt  that  it  had  better  be  examined, 
for  it  cried  out  to  her  from  the  darkness  of  her  mind 
where  she  had  been  at  pains  to  hide  it.  Perhaps  on 
examination  it  might  prove  to  be  imagination  only, 
to  have  no  real  existence  except  in  her  own  mind.  And 
the  trouble  was  Claude. 

It  seemed  to  her  ages  ago,  though  in  point  of  fact  it  was 
still  scarcely  twelve  months,  that  she  had  told  May 
Franklin  that  sometimes  he  said  things  that  gave  her  a 
check.  But  it  seemed  almost  longer  ago,  though  it  was 
only  a  few  weeks,  that  she  had  sat  alone  one  afternoon, 
when  Claude  was  at  Milan  meeting  his  father  and  mother, 
and  registered  the  fact  that  he  again  gave  her  checks. 
Between  those  two  occasions  lay  romance,  a  golden 
dream,  an  experience  which,  common  though  it  may  be 
in  this  world  of  men  and  women,  was  none  the  less  mar- 


i92  THEOSBORNES 

vellous,  miraculous.  He,  his  love  for  her,  and  her  love 
for  him,  had  lifted  life  out  of  the  levels  on  which  it  had 
hitherto  moved,  had  made  of  it  a  winged  and  iridescent 
thing,  which  had  soared  many-coloured  into  sunlight  and 
moonlight.  And  that  marvel,  the  enchantment  of  it,  had 
seemed  to  her  then  to  be  a  thing  indestructible  and 
eternal.  While  she  was  she,  and  while  Claude  was 
Claude,  it  could  never  change,  nor  shed  one  feather  from 
its  rainbow  wings.  Often  had  she  whispered  to  him, 
or  he  to  her:  "It  will  be  like  this  for  ever";  more  often 
had  the  tense  silence  testified  with  greater  authority  than 
any  voice,  even  his.  In  those  months  whatever  her 
senses  perceived  was  glorified:  she  looked  at  the  world 
through  the  radiance  of  love. 

That  conviction  that  their  romance  would  last  for  ever 
was  part  of  the  divine  madness  of  love :  she  saw  that  now 
clearly  enough.  She  who  had  believed  that  they,  and  they 
alone,  were  different  from  all  others,  had  not  been  truly 
sane  when  she  believed  it:  she  had  been  living  in  a  world, 
real  no  doubt  while  it  existed,  yet  not  only  capable  of 
being  extinguished  but  doomed  to  extinction.  Once, 
before  their  marriage,  she  had  talked  to  Claude  about 
what  she  called  "the  gray-business"  of  life,  and  he,  she 
remembered,  had  given  the  gray-business  a  "facer,"  to 
use  his  words,  by  pointing  to  the  example  of  his  father 
and  mother.  That  had  seemed  to  Dora,  already  ripen- 
ing for  romance,  to  fall  very  short  of  the  reply  she  wanted. 
She  had  wanted  lover's  nonsense  which  would  assure 
her  that  for  them  romance  could  never  fade.  But  it  had 
faded:  it  always  faded.  The  question  now  was  con- 
cerned with  what  was  left.  Did  even  the  consolation  of 


THEOSBORNES  193 

Claude's  " facer"  remain  to  her?  Had  she,  to  put  her 
part  of  it  baldly  and  brutally,  got  as  great  an  admiration, 
respect,  and  affection  for  her  husband  as  Mrs.  Osborne 
had  for  hers  ?  She  knew  she  had  not. 

To-day  she  could  look  undazzled  at  the  materials  out 
of  which  her  romance  had  been  constructed  and  analyse 
them.  It  was  made  of  her  passion  for  beauty.  She  had 
fallen  in  love  with  his  good  looks.  And  she  was  getting 
used  to  them:  she  had  got  used  to  them.  What  else  was 
there?  What  was  left  to  learn,  now  she  had  that  by 
heart  ? 

There  was  a  great  deal  left.    So  she  told  herself,  but 
without  emotion.    There  was  his  character  left,  which 
was  sterling ;  his  qualities,  which  were  excellent ;  his  kind- 
ness, his  safeness,  his  —  to  go  to  purely  material  things  - 
his  wealth.     And  his  vulgarity. 

The  word  was  coined:  her  thought  for  the  first  time 
definitely  allowed  it  to  pass  into  currency,  and  she  had 
to  reckon  with  it. 

What  a  topsy-turvy  affair  it  had  been!  How  strik- 
ingly different  a  disposition  from  that  which  she  had 
contemplated  had  come  about!  She  had  told  herself 
that  she  must  for  ever  be  in  love  with  that  beautiful  face, 
that  slim,  active  body,  those  deft,  decided  movements; 
and  she  had  told  herself  that  his  vulgarities  were  things 
of  no  moment,  things  to  which  she  would  swiftly  get  used. 
But  events  had  been  evolved  otherwise.  She  was  used 
to  his  beauty;  his  vulgarities  were  cumulative  in  their 
effect  on  her;  instead  of  getting  used  to  them  she  was 
daily  more  irritated  by  them  and  —  more  ashamed  of 
them.  She  had  imagined  even  that  it  would  be  easy  to 


i94  THEOSBORNES 

cure  them,  to  eradicate  them.  But  it  proved  to  be  a 
task  like  that  of  emptying  a  spring  with  a  teacup.  She 
had  thought  that  they  lay,  so  to  speak,  like  casual  water 
on  the  surface  of  the  ground,  a  mere  puddle  that  the 
sun  would  swiftly  drink  up.  It  was  not  so;  they  sprang 
from  his  nature,  and  came  welling  up  bubbling  and  plen- 
teous and  inexhaustible. 

And  there  was  something  about  them,  so  it  seemed  to 
her  now,  that  tinged  and  made  unpalatable  all  the  good 
qualities  in  which  he  was  so  rich.  You  could  draw  a 
gallon  of  pure  fresh  kindness  from  that  well-spring  which 
was  inexhaustible,  but  even  before  you  had  time  to  put 
your  lips  to  it,  and  drink  of  it,  some  drop  —  quite  a 
little  drop  —  would  trickle  in  from  the  source  of  his 
vulgarity  and  taint  it  all.  It  was  even  worse  than  that ; 
there  was  a  permanent  leak  from  the  one  into  the  other, 
the  kindness  was  tainted  at  the  source. 

Dora  did  not  indulge  in  these  reflections  from  any 
spirit  of  idle  criticism  or  morbid  dissection.  She  wanted 
to  see  how  they  stood,  how  bad  things  were,  and  what 
chance  there  was  of  their  righting  themselves.  They 
were  no  longer  mere  surface  vulgarities  in  him  (or  so  she 
believed)  that  got  on  her  nerves:  she  no  longer  particu- 
larly minded  whether  he  said  "handsome  lady"  or  not; 
what  she  did  mind  was  the  impulse  that  prompted  him, 
for  instance,  to  suggest  that  she  might  go  down  and  see 
Uncle  Alf  because  he  gave  them  "fifteen  thou. "  a  year. 
She  minded  his  saying  he  had  guessed  the  reason  why 
she  did  not  want  to  establish  herself  in  Park  Lane; 
namely,  because  she  wanted  to  be  alone  with  him.  She 
minded  the  suggestion  that  she  had  written  to  say  the  flat 


THEOSBORNES  195 

was  stuffy,  in  order  to  be  asked  there.  It  was  all  com- 
mon, common;  he  judged  her  by  impossible  standards, 
standards  that  were  inconceivable.  And  yet  all  the  time 
he  was  good,  he  was  kind,  he  had  all  the  qualities  that 
should  make  her  love  him,  make  her  devotion  an  im- 
perishable thing.  As  it  was,  they  had  been  married 
scarcely  six  months,  and  already  she  knew  that  at  times 
he  so  got  on  to  her  nerves  that  she  could  have  screamed. 
Already,  as  she  began  to  look  closely  at  these  things, 
she  felt  she  was  glad  they  were  going  to  Park  Lane;  she 
was  glad  that  limitations  were  placed  on  her  being  alone 
with  him. 

It  was  a  little  cooler  out  of  town,  and  Richmond  Park 
was  in  the  full  luxuriance  of  its  summer  beauty.  They 
had  entered  by  the  Roehampton  Gate;  she  had  still  half 
an  hour  to  spare  before  the  time  she  had  said  she  would 
be  at  Uncle  Alfred's,  and  she  directed  her  driver  to  turn 
up  to  the  left,  past  the  White  Lodge,  and  go  round  by 
Robin  Hood  Gate  and  Kingston  Gate.  A  delicious 
smell  of  greenness  and  coolness  came  from  the  noble 
groves  of  trees,  beneath  the  clear  shade  of  which,  knee- 
deep  in  the  varnished  green  of  the  young  bracken,  stood 
herds  of  fallow  deer  with  twitching  ears  and  switching 
tails,  warding  off  the  persistence  of  the  flies.  All  the 
sweet  forest  sights  and  sounds  were  there :  the  air  was  full 
of  the  buzz  of  insects,  and  hidden  birds  called  to  each 
other  from  among  the  branches.  Distantly  on  the  right 
she  could  see  gleams  of  water,  where  the  Pen  Ponds  lay 
basking  in  the  sunlight,  and  the  flush  of  mauve  and 
red  from  the  great  rhododendron  thickets  above  them. 
All  the  triumph  of  summer  time  was  there;  all  the  joy 


196  THEOSBORNES 

of  the  ripeness  and  maturity  of  the  year,  of  the  kindled 
and  immortal  vitality  of  the  world.  But  for  herself, 
though  every  day  brought  nearer  to  her  the  miracle  of 
motherhood,  it  seemed  as  if  summer  had  stopped. 

Once  more  she  faced  the  situation  as  she  conceived  it 
to  be.  The  time  of  romance,  those  months  in  the  autumn 
were  over:  the  red  and  gold  of  the  autumn  were  withered 
from  the  trees.  Brief  had  been  their  glory,  which  should 
have  shed  its  light  over  many  years  yet ;  but,  as  far  as  she 
was  concerned,  what  had  made  their  flame  was  just 
the  personal  beauty  of  her  husband.  And  out  of  them 
should  already  have  sprung  a  deep  and  tender  affection, 
the  friendship  which  is  not  only  the  true  and  noble  sequel 
of  love,  but  is  an  integral  part  of  love  itself,  perhaps  even 
love's  heart.  But  was  it  there  ?  It  seemed  to  her  rather 
that  something  bitter  had  come  out  of  it,  something  in 
which  regret  for  the  past  was  mingled  with  the  gall  of 
disillusionment.  And  even  regret  had  but  small  part 
in  it ;  those  months  of  gold  seemed  already  unreal  to  her : 
she  felt  that  she  was  regretting  a  dream.  It  was  the 
same  in  little  things  too,  for  the  little  things  all  took  their 
colour  from  what  had  been  to  her  then  the  one  great 
reality.  He  had  referred  to  himself,  for  instance,  that 
very  afternoon  as  "Claudius  Imperator,"  and  it  was 
with  a  sense  of  unreality  that  she  remembered  the  genesis 
of  that  very  microscopic  joke.  She  had  bought  a  Roman 
coin  in  Venice  with  that  inscription  on  it,  and  had  given 
it  to  him,  saying  it  was  his  label  in  case  he  was  lost.  To- 
day she  could  not  conceive  doing  such  a  thing:  she  could 
not  recapture  the  state  of  mind  in  which  she  did  it,  the 
impulse  even  that  made  such  a  trifle  conceivable.  In  any 


THEOSBORNES  197 

case,  the  thing  was  one  that  might  be  said  once  and  then 
be  forgotten.  But  Claude  had  the  retentive  Osborne 
sense  of  humour.  With  him  it  was  "Once  a  joke, 
always  a  joke,"  and  from  time  to  time,  as  to-day,  he 
brought  out  the  "Claudius  Imperator"  again.  The  Os- 
borne humour  had  a  heavy  tread  —  a  slow,  heavy, 
slouching  rustic  tread  —  and  a  guffaw  of  a  laugh. 

There  is  a  Spectator  within  each  of  us  who  for  ever 
watches  our  thoughts  and  words,  and  criticises  them. 
It  may  be  called  conscience,  or  guidance,  or  the  devil,  as 
the  case  may  be ;  for  some  folk  are  gifted  with  a  Spectator 
that  is  their  best  self,  others  with  a  Spectator  which  is 
but  a  parody  of  themselves.  Dora's  Spectator  was  above 
the  average;  he  was  optimistic  anyhow,  and  kindly,  and 
at  this  point  he  came  to  her  aid  with,  so  to  speak,  several 
smart  raps  over  her  knuckles.  Whatever  was  the  truth 
of  the  whole  matter  —  if,  indeed,  there  is  any  absolute 
truth  to  be  arrived  at  in  the  fluid  and  ever-varying 
adjustments  of  our  relationships  with  others  —  only 
one  attitude  is  compatible  with  self-respect;  namely, 
to  find  out  and  hoard  like  grains  of  gold  all  that  is  fine 
and  generous  and  lovable  in  others,  and  do  our  best  to 
find  something  in  ourselves  worthy  of  being  matched  with 
it.  Instead  of  this,  so  said  Dora's  Spectator  to  her  now, 
she  had,  with  acute  and  avid  eye,  been  picking  out  all 
that  in  Claude  seemed  to  her  to  be  trivial  or  ludicrous 
or  tiresome,  and  been  finding  in  herself,  to  match  it, 
intolerance  and  want  of  charity.  There  had  been  no 
difficulty,  so  said  her  Spectator,  in  laying  hands  on  plenty 
of  those. 


198  THEOSBORNES 

She  had  but  one  word  to  say  in  self-defence,  and  the 
moment  it  was  said  she  perceived  that  it  amounted  to 
self -accusation.  She  had  fallen  in  love  with  his  beauty: 
how  could  she  not  despond  when  she  found  that  she  was 
in  love  with  it  —  like  that  —  no  longer  ?  It  had  blinded 
her  to  all  else:  she  had  seen  his  vulgarities  but  dimly, 
if  at  all,  even  as  she  had  seen  his  panoply  of  excellent 
qualities  but  dimly.  Now  she  saw  only  the  vulgarities, 
or  at  any  rate  she  saw  them  right  in  the  foreground,  big 
and  blinding-  while  behind,  in  the  distance,  so  to  speak, 
sat  the  rest  of  him.  Was  it  not  reasonable  that  her  out- 
look, which  must  take  its  colour  from  the  past,  should 
be  pessimistic  ?  And  then  even  that  piece  of  self-defence 
was  turned  into  self -accusation.  If  that  was  the  case, 
the  fault  had  been  hers  from  the  beginning.  But  that 
was  what  she  had  done ;  she  had  separated  him,  the  man, 
into  packets:  she  had  fallen  in  love  with  one  packet,  and 
now  she  was  spreading  in  front  of  her  another  that  only 
irritated  and  almost  disgusted  her.  She  had  yet  to  learn 
the  true  and  the  wider  outlook,  to  feel  that  fire  of  love 
that  fuses  all  things  together,  and  loves  though  it  can  ten- 
derly laugh,  and  is  gentle  always,  and  rejoices  in  the 
weaknesses  and  imperfections  and  faults  of  the  beloved, 
simply  because  they  are  his.  For  though  there  are 
many  ways  of  love,  the  spirit  that  animates  them  all  is 
just  that;  they  are  all  swayed  by  one  magical  tune.  But 
that  Dora  did  not  yet  know,  she  had  not  heard  a  note 
of  it,  she  did  not  even  know  the  region  of  the  soul 
where  it  made  melody  all  day  long.  All  that  she  had 
learned  in  the  last  few  minutes  was  that  she  had  with 
considerable  acuteness  been  spying  out  causes  for 


THEOSBORNES  199 

complaint,  excuses  for  dissatisfaction.    She  could  do  a 
little  better  than  that. 

By  this  time  she  had  arrived  at  Uncle  AlPs  and  though 
the  severe  remarks  of  the  Spectator  had  partially  braced 
her  again,  after  the  rather  sloppy  abandonment  of  self- 
pity  and  dejection  into  which  her  introspection  had  brought 
her,  it  must  be  confessed  that  there  was  something  about 
Uncle  Alf,  caustic  and  malicious  though  he  was,  that 
restored  her  more  efficaciously.  For  out  of  all  the  weap- 
ons with  which  it  is  fair  to  fight  the  disappointments  and 
despondencies  that  are  incidental  to  human  life,  there 
is  none  sharper  or  more  rapier-like  in  attack  or  defence 
than  the  sense  of  humour.  And  Uncle  Alf  was  well 
equipped  there:  not  even  the  picture  dealer  whom  he 
habitually  worsted  would  have  denied  that  he  had  that. 
It  was  lambent  and  ill-natured;  it  twinkled  and  stung;  but 
it  had  the  enviable  trick  of  perceiving  what  was  ludicrous. 

"And  I  hear  poor  old  Eddie  has  been  out  with  you 
and  Claude  in  Venice,  my  dear,"  he  said;  "and  I  can't 
say  which  I'm  the  most  sorry  for  —  you,  or  him,  or 
Claude,  or  Venice." 

"  Oh,  why  Claude  ?  "  asked  she,  for  she  had  not  thought 
of  being  sorry  for  Claude. 

"Because  you  had  taught  him  probably  to  admire 
Tintoret  —  or  say  he  did  —  and  Eddie  would  want  him 
to  admire  the  railway  station.  He  would  have  to  trim. 
A  very  funny  party  you  must  have  been,  my  dear." 

Dora  laughed;  till  this  moment  she  had  thought  of  them 
all  as  a  rather  tragic  party,  and  the  other  aspect  had  not 
occurred  to  her. 


200  THEOSBORNES 

"Do  you  know,  I  expect  we  were,"  she  said;  "and  all 
the  time  I  took  it  seriously.  I  wonder  if  that  was  a  mis- 
take, Uncle  Alf." 

"To  be  sure  it  was.  There's  many  things  in  this  world 
that  will  depress  you,  and  make  you  good  for  nothing, 
if  you  take  them  seriously,  and  that  cheer  you  up  if  you 
don't." 

That  was  not  exactly  wisdom  out  of  the  mouths  of  babes 
and  sucklings,  since  Uncle  Alf  was  a  very  old  man,  but 
it  was  a  sort  of  elementary  wisdom  which  a  child  might 
have  hit  on.  And  she  felt  that  below  the  surface  of  this 
wizened,  crabbed  little  old  man  there  was  something  that 
was  human.  She  had  never  suspected  it  before:  in  her 
shallowness  she  had  been  content  to  look  upon  him  as  a 
mask  with  a  money-bag.  To  be  sure,  he  was  devoted 
to  Claude:  she  had  not  even  reckoned  with  what  that 
implied,  not  given  him  credit  for  the  power  of  feeling 
affection. 

"I  believe  you  are  right,"  she  said. 

"And  when  you're  as  old  as  me,  my  dear,  you  will 
know  it,"  said  he.  "Lord,  I've  had  a  lot  of  amusement 
out  of  life  —  digging  for  it,  you  understand,  not  picking 
it  up.  Poor  old  Eddie  amuses  me  more  than  I  can  say. 
Why,  his  hair  is  turning  gray  with  success  and  pleasure." 

"Ah,  not  a  word  against  him,"  said  Dora;  "he's  the 
kindest  Dad  that  ever  lived." 

"I  daresay;  but  there  are  things  to  laugh  at  in  poor 
old  Eddie,  thank  God.  He  and  his  Grote,  and  his  Park 
Lane,  and  all!  Did  you  ever  see  such  a  set-out,  my  dear? 
But  Eddie  in  Venice  must  have  been  a  shade  finer  yet. 
Tell  me  about  it.  He  and  Maria  on  the  Grand  Canal, 


THEOSBORNES  201 

and  you  and  Claude;  all  in  the  same  gondola,  I'll  be 
bound,  so  as  to  make  a  family  party.  'This  is  the  way 
we  English  go,'  good  Lord.  I  wouldn't  have  been  your 
gondoliers  on  a  hot  day,  not  even  for  the  entertainment 
of  seeing  you  all  like  Noah's  Ark.  Your  gondoliers  were 
thin  men  that  evening,  my  dear,  poor  devils!" 

Alfred  had  guessed  the  situation  with  the  unerring 
eye  of  cynical  malice,  and  his  words  brought  the  scene 
back  to  Dora  with  amazing  accuracy.  That  day  had 
depressed  her  at  the  time;  she  had  never  guessed  how 
funny  it  was ;  and  here  she  was  laughing  at  it  now,  when 
it  was  a  month  old ! 

Alfred  continued: 

"Eddie  among  the  pictures,  too,"  he  said.  "A  bull 
in  a  china  shop  would  have  been  more  suitably  housed! 
Why,  I  nearly  came  out  myself  in  order  to  see  the  fun. 
'What  a  holy  look  there's  about  that,  Maria,'  he'd  say; 
or,  'My,  I  don't  believe  it  would  go  into  the  gallery  at 
Grote  unless  you  took  the  roof  off.'  And  he  wrote 
to  me  yesterday  that  he  had  bought  a  copy  of  that  house- 
maid among  the  clouds  by  Titian  —  what  a  daub,  my 
dear!  —  with  a  frame  to  match!" 

It  was  too  much  for  Uncle  Alfred,  and  he  gave  a  series 
of  little  squeaks  on  a  very  high  note,  shaking  his  head. 

"Eddie's  a  silly  man,"  he  said;  "a  very  silly  man  is  poor 
old  Eddie,  and  he  gets  sillier  as  he  gets  older.  What 
does  he  want  with  his  Assumption  of  the  Virgin  and  his 
six  powdered  footmen?  What  good  do  they  do  him? 
As  little  as  my  liniment  does  me.  Lord,  my  dear,  he  says 
something  too  in  his  letter  that  makes  me  think  they're 
going  to  make  a  peer  of  him.  He  hints  it:  ah,  I  wish  I'd 


202  THEOSBORNES 

kept  the  letter;  but  it  made  me  feel  sick,  and  I  threw  it 
away.  But  Eddie  a  peer,  my  dear.  And  I  saw  in  a 
leader  in  the  Times  the  other  day  that  the  Prime  Minis- 
ter hadn't  got  a  sense  of  humour!  I  reckon  they'll 
sack  that  leader  writer  if  it's  true  that  Eddie's  going 
to  have  a  peerage!  Lord  deliver  us:  Lord  Saucepan:  let's 
think  of  half  a  dozen  names  and  send  some  picture  post 
cards  of  Venice  to  Lord  Saucepan,  care  of  Mr.  Osborne, 
Park  Lane;  Lord  Lavatory,  Lord  Kitchen-sink.  Fancy 
Per  too,  an  honourable,  and  Mrs.  Per.  My  dear,  I  hate 
that  woman  worse  than  poison.  I  should  like  to  smack 
her  face.  She  thinks  she's  a  lady,  and  Maria  thinks  she's 
a  lady.  Why,  Maria's  more  of  a  lady  herself  —  and 
that's  not  saying  much.  To  see  Mrs.  Per  and  you  talk- 
ing together  about  art  or  acting  would  make  a  cat  laugh. 
I  wonder  at  your  marrying  Claude  when  you  thought  of 
his  relations." 

Dora  smiled  at  him. 

"But  that's  just  what  I  didn't  do,"  she  said.  "I  only 
thought  of  Claude." 

"And  well  you  might.  My  dear,  I  love  that  boy.  He's 
got  into  proper  hands  too:  you  can  make  a  lot  of  him. 
Lord  Toasting-fork,  Lord  Egg- whisk,  Lord  Frying-pan." 

Uncle  Alfred  could  not  get  away  from  inventing  titles 
for  "poor  old  Eddie,"  and  he  did  it  with  a  malicious 
relish  that  was  rather  instructive  to  Dora.  It  could  not 
be  called  kind,  but  it  hurt  nobody;  and  his  frank  amuse- 
ment at  the  idea  of  the  peerage  was  certainly  better  than 
the  heart-sinkings  with  which  the  prospect  of  the  event 
had  inspired  Dora  when  she  thought  of  the  genial  pom- 
posity with  which  it  would  be  received.  Throughout 


THEOSBORNES  203 

she  had  been  too  heavy,  too  ponderous :  she  had  pulled 
long  faces  instead  of  laughing,  had  seen  the  depressing 
side  of  expeditions  like  the  family  party  in  the  gondola 
instead  of  its  humorous  aspect.  That  was  a  hint  worth 
attending  to.  She  had  got  a  sense  of  humour,  so  she 
believed,  yet  somehow  it  had  never  occurred  to  her  to 
look  at  those  spoiled  days  of  Venice  in  a  humorous  light. 

Soon  she  rose  to  go. 

"Uncle  Alfred,"  she  said,  "you've  done  me  good, 
do  you  know?  It  is  better  to  be  amused  than  depressed, 
isn't  it?" 

"Yes,  my  dear,  and  I  hope  you'll  laugh  at  me  all  the 
way  back  to  town,  me  and  my  great-coat  on  a  day  like 
this,  and  my  goloshes  to  keep  the  damp  out,  and  a  strip 
of  flannel,  I  assure  you,  round  the  small  of  my  back.  Eh, 
I  had  the  lumbago  bad  when  first  I  saw  you  down  at  Grote, 
but  the  sight  of  those  pictures  of  Sabincourt's  of  Eddie 
and  Maria  did  me  more  good  than  a  pint  of  liniment. 
What  a  pair  of  guys!  Lord  and  Lady  Biscuit-tin. " 

Dora  laughed  again. 

"How  horrid  of  you!"  she  said.  "Well,  I  must  go. 
Claude  and  I  are  going  to  the  theatre  to-night.  And  we 
are  leaving  the  flat  in  Mount  Street,  Uncle  Alf,  and  are 
to  live  in  the  house  in  Park  Lane  till  the  end  of  the  season. 
Wasn't  it  kind  of  Dad  to  suggest  it?" 

"Not  a  bit  of  it.  You'll  help  entertain  Maria's  fine 
friends,  half  of  whom  she  don't  know  by  sight.  Not  but 
what  I  envy  you:  Maria's  as  good  as  a  play  down  at 
Grote,  and  Maria  in  London  must  be  enough  to  empty 
the  music-halls.  She  does  too,  so  they  tell  me.  She 
asks  everybody  in  the  'London  Directory,'  and  they  all 


204  THEOSBORNES 

come.  Good-bye,  my  dear;  come  down  again  some 
time  and  tell  me  all  they  do  and  say.  Write  it  down 
every  evening,  else  one's  liable  to  forget  the  plums." 

Dora  had  given  orders  that  their  personal  luggage 
should  be  transferred  from  the  flat  to  No.  92  during  the 
afternoon,  and  on  her  return  she  drove  straight  to  that 
house.  Claude  had  already  arrived,  and  was  sitting 
in  the  big  Italian  drawing  room.  He  had  had  a  most 
successful  meeting,  and  was  in  excellent  spirits. 

"This  is  a  bit  better  than  the  flat,"  he  said.  "I  went 
in  there  just  now,  and  it  was  like  a  furnace.  But  here 
you  wouldn't  know  it  was  a  hot  day.  It's  a  handsome 
apartment:  the  governor  bought  nothing  but  the  best 
when  he  had  it  done.  And  how's  Uncle  Alf?" 

"Very  well,  I  thought,  and  very  amusing,"  said  she. 
"Oh,  Claude,  he  had  a  great-coat  on,  and  goloshes.  He 
is  too  funny!" 

Claude  did  not  reply  for  a  moment. 

"Darling,  I  hate  criticising  you,"  he  said  at  length, 
"but  I  don't  think  you  ought  to  laugh  at  Uncle  Alf,  con- 
sidering all  he  does  for  us." 

"But  he  recommended  me  to,"  said  she.  "He  said 
he  hoped  I  should  laugh  at  him  all  the  way  back  to  town. 
In  fact  we  talked  about  laughing  at  people,  and  he  said 
what  a  good  plan  it  was." 

Claude  paused  again.  He  felt  strongly  about  this 
subject. 

"Did  he  laugh  at  the  governor?"  he  asked. 

"Well,  yes,  a  little,"  said  Dora. 

"I  hope  you  stuck  up  for  him.     I'm  sure  you  did." 

Dora   gave   a   hopeless   little   sigh:  she   wondered   if 


THEOSBORNES  205 

Uncle  Alfred  could  have  seen  the   humorous  aspect  of 
this ;  personally  she  could  not. 

"It  was  no  question  of  sticking  up  for  him,"  she  said. 
"It  was  all  chaff,  fun." 

Claude  got  up,  with  his  chin  a  good  deal  protruded. 

"Ah,  fun  is  all  very  well  in  its  right  place,"  he  said, 
"and  I'm  sure  no  one  likes  a  joke  more  than  me.  But 
there  are  certain  things  one  should  hold  exempt  from 
one's  fun " 

Dora  tried  the  humorous  plan  recommended  by 
Uncle  Alfred. 

"Darling,  I  hope  you  don't  consider  yourself  exempt," 
she  said.  "I  am  laughing  at  you  now.  You  are  ridi- 
culous, dear.  You  take  things  heavily,  and  I  do  too.  We 
must  try  not  to.  So  I  hereby  give  you  leave  to  laugh 
at  mother  and  Austell  as  much  as  you  like  —  and  me." 

"Dora,  I  am  serious,"  he  said. 

"I  know;  that  is  just  the  trouble,"  she  said,  still  lightly. 

Claude's  face  darkened. 

"Well,  it's  a  trouble  you  must  learn  to  put  up  with," 
he  said  rather  sharply.  "I  daresay  I'm  old-fashioned: 
you  may  call  me  what  you  like.  But  I  ask  you  to  respect 
my  father.  I  daresay  he  and  the  mater  seem  to  you 
ridiculous  at  times.  If  they  do,  I  ask  you  to  keep  your 
humorous  observations  to  yourself.  I  hate  speaking 
like  this,  but  I  am  obliged  to." 

Dora  felt  her  hands  grow  suddenly  cold  and  damp. 
She  was  not  afraid  of  him  exactly,  but  there  was  some 
physical  shrinking  from  him  that  was  rather  like  fear. 

"I  don't  see  the  obligation,"  she  said. 

"  Perhaps  not.    It  is  sufficient  that  I  do.    Now  let's  have 


206  THEOSBORNES. 

done.  We  spoke  on  the  same  subject,  your  attitude  to 
my  father,  in  Venice.  Don't  let  us  speak  of  it  again!" 

"You  say  your  say,  and  I  am  to  make  no  reply.  Is 
that  it?"  she  asked. 

"Yes;  that  is  it.  I  know  I  am  right.  Come,  Dora." 
But  the  appeal  had  no  effect,  and  for  the  moment  she 
did  not  know  how  to  apply  Uncle  Alf's  wise  counsels. 

"And  if  I  know  you  are  wrong?"  she  asked.  "If  I 
tell  you  that  you  don't  understand?" 

"It  will  make  no  difference.  Look  here:  the  governor 
has  done  lots  for  you.  You've  never  expressed  a  wish 
but  what  he  hasn't  gratified." 

"Then  ask  him  if  he  is  satisfied  with  my  attitude 
toward  him,"  said  Dora.  "See  what  he  says.  Tell 
him  that  Uncle  Alfred  has  laughed  at  him,  and  I  laughed 
too.  Tell  him  all." 

"I  wouldn't  hurt  him  like  that,"  said  Claude. 

Dora  walked  to  the  window  and  back  again.  She 
felt  helpless  in  a  situation  she  believed  to  be  trivial.  But 
she  could  not  laugh  it  off:  she  could  think  of  no  light 
reply  that  would  act  as  a  dissolvent  to  it.  And  if  she 
could  find  no  light  reply,  only  a  serious  answer  or  silence 
was  possible.  She  chose  the  latter.  If  more  words  were 
to  be  said,  she  wished  that  Claude  should  have  the 
responsibility  of  them.  Eventually  he  took  it. 

"And  I'm  sure  we've  all  been  good  enough  to  your 
people,"  he  said;  "made  them  welcome  at  Grote  for  as 
long  as  they  chose,  and  behaved  friendly.  And  it  was 
only  ten  minutes  before  you  came  in  that  I  wrote  to  Jim, 
telling  him  he  could  live  in  the  flat  and  welcome  till  the 
end  of  July.  I  don't  see  what  I  could  do  more." 


THEOSBORNES  207 

The  logical  reply  was  on  the  tip  of  Dora's  tongue  — 
the  reply  "That  did  not  cost  you  anything"  —  but  she 
let  it  get  no  further.  Only  she  rebelled  against  the 
thought  that  it  was  a  kindness  to  do  something  that  did  not 
cost  anything.  He  thought  it  was  kind  —  and  so  in  a 
way  it  was  —  to  give  Jim  the  flat  rent  free.  He  might 
perhaps  have  let  it  for  fifty  pounds.  But  he  did  not  want 
fifty  pounds.  Yet  he  thought  that  it  was  kind :  it  seemed 
to  him  kind.  It  must  be  taken  at  that:  it  was  no  use 
arguing,  going  into  the  reasons  for  which  it  was  no 
real  kindness  at  all.  And  he  had  told  her  that  now,  she 
felt  sure,  to  contrast  his  friendliness  to  her  relations  with 
her  ridicule  —  so  he  would  put  it  —  of  his.  But  he  had 
done  his  best:  she  was  bound  to  take  it  like  that,  not 
point  out  the  cheapness  of  it. 

"Claude,  dear,  that  was  nice  of  you,"  she  said,  search- 
ing for  anything  that  should  magnify  his  kindness.  "And 
Jim  will  be  an  awful  tenant.  He  will  leave  your  books 
about  and  smoke  your  cigars.  I  hope  you've  locked 
them  up." 

"Not  a  thing,"  said  he.  "He  just  steps  in.  He'll 
find  a  sovereign  on  my  dressing  table,  I  believe,  if  he 
looks,  and  a  box  of  cigars  in  a  drawer  of  my  writing  table 
which  he's  welcome  to.  One  doesn't  bother  about  things 
like  that." 

That  was  the  worst:  the  parade  of  generosity  could  not 
go  further  than  saying  that  there  was  no  parade  at  all. 
Dora  could  not  reply  any  more  to  that:  she  could  only 
repeat. 

"It's  awfully  kind  of  you,"  she  said  again.  "We 
must  go  and  dress  if  we  are  to  be  in  time  for  the  first  act." 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THOUGH  it  was  true  that  Claude's  kindness  in  lend- 
ing Austell  his  flat  did  not  cost  him  anything,  it 
conferred  a  great  convenience  on  his  beneficiary,  and 
Jim,  who  had  been  living  at  the  Bath  Club,  had  his 
luggage  packed  without  pause,  and  wrote  the  letter  of 
acceptance  and  thanks  to  Claude  from  the  flat  itself  on 
Claude's  writing  paper.  The  letter  was  quite  genuine 
and  heart-felt,  or  at  the  least  pocket-felt,  for  Jim  had  had 
some  slight  difference  of  opinion  with  his  mother  on  the 
subject  of  being  seen  in  a  hansom  with  a  young  lady 
who  in  turn  was  sometimes  seen  on  the  stage,  and  Eaton 
Place,  where  he  had  meant  to  spend  those  weeks,  was 
closed  to  him.  But  Claude's  flat  filled  the  bill  exactly; 
it  was  far  more  comfortable  than  his  mother's  house,  and 
there  was  nothing  to  pay  for  lodging,  so  that  it  was  better 
than  the  club.  His  satisfaction  was  complete  when  he 
found  that  Claude  had  left  his  cook  there,  with  no  instruc- 
tions whatever  except  to  go  on  cooking,  nor  any  orders 
to  have  catering  bills  sent  to  the  tenant.  So  Jim  made 
himself  charming  to  the  cook,  gave  her  the  sovereign 
which  he  had  at  once  found  on  Claude's  dressing  table 
when  he  explored  his  bedroom,  and  said  he  would  be  at 
home  for  lunch.  Plovers'  eggs?  Yes,  by  all  means, 
and  a  quail,  and  a  little  macedoine  of  fruit.  And  by  way 
of  burying  the  hatchet  with  his  mother,  and  incidentally 
making  her  green  with  envy  (for  it  would  have  suited 

208 


THEOSBORNES  209 

her  very  well  if  Claude  had  offered  her  the  flat,  since 
somebody  wanted  to  take  her  house),  he  instantly  tele- 
phoned asking  her  to  lunch,  and  mentioned  that  he  was 
in  Mount  Street  till  the  end  of  July.  The  lunch  she 
declined,  and  made  no  comment  on  the  other,  but  Jim 
heard  her  sigh  into  the  telephone.  She  could  not  hear 
him  grin. 

As  had  been  mentioned  before,  Jim  had  no  liking  for 
Claude,  and  up  till  the  present  he  had  done  little  living 
upon  him.  But  this  loan  of  the  flat  —  especially  since 
there  was  free  food  going  —  was  extremely  opportune, 
for  at  the  present  moment  Jim  was  particularly  hard  up, 
having  been  through  a  Derby  week  of  the  most  catas- 
trophic nature.  He  had  done  nothing  rash,  too,  which 
made  his  misfortunes  harder  to  bear;  he  had  acted  on 
no  secret  and  mysterious  tips  from  the  stables,  but  had 
with  the  most  plebeian  respectability  backed  favourites 
only.  But  the  favourites  had  behaved  in  the  most 
unaccountable  manner,  and  their  blighted  careers  had 
very  nearly  succeeded  in  completely  blighting  his.  But 
he  had  raised  money  on  the  rent  of  Grote  which  would 
be  paid  him  at  the  end  of  the  month,  and  had  paid  up 
all  his  debts.  That  process,  however,  had  made  fearful 
inroads  on  his  receipts  for  the  next  quarter,  and  strict 
economy  being  necessary,  Claude's  kindness  had  been 
most  welcome.  And  as  he  ate  his  quail,  Jim  planned 
two  or  three  pleasant  little  dinner  parties.  He  would 
certainly  ask  Claude  and  Dora  to  one  of  them,  or  was 
that  a  rather  ironical  thing  to  do,  since  Claude  would 
be  paying  for  the  food  that  they  all  ate  ?  He  would  pay 
for  the  wine  as  well,  it  seemed,  for  a  bottle  of  excellent 


210  THEOSBORNES 

Moselle  had  appeared,  since  he  had  expressed  a  preference 
that  way,  coming,  he  supposed,  from  Claude's  cellar. 

Jim  looked  round  the  room  as  he  ate  and  drank,  pleased 
to  find  himself  in  this  unexpected  little  haven  of  rest,  but 
feeling  at  the  same  time  envious  of  and  rather  resentful 
towards  its  possessor.  He  quite  sympathised  with  the 
doctrine  of  Socialism,  and  asked  himself  why  it  should 
be  given  to  Claude  to  live  perpetually  in  that  diviner  air 
where  financial  anxieties  are  unknown,  where  no  bills 
need  ever  remain  unpaid  except  because  it  was  a  nuisance 
to  have  to  dip  a  pen  in  the  ink  and  draw  a  cheque,  whereas 
he  himself  was  as  perpetually  in  want  of  money.  The 
particular  reason  why  he  was  in  this  moment  in  want  of 
it,  namely  because  he  had  had  a  very  bad  week  at  Epsom, 
did  not  present  itself  to  his  mind,  or,  if  it  did,  was  dis- 
missed as  being  an  ephemeral  detail.  Perhaps  in  this 
one  instance  that  was  the  reason  why  just  now  he  was 
so  absurdly  hard  up,  but  the  general  question  was  what 
occupied  him.  Claude  was  rich,  he  was  poor;  where 
was  the  justice  of  it?  He  liked  prints,  too,  and  why 
should  Claude  be  able  to  cover  his  dining  room  walls 
with  these  delightful  first  impressions,  while  he  could 
not?  Indeed,  he  had  no  dining  room  at  all  in  which 
he  could  hang  prints  even  if  he  possessed  them.  His 
dining  room  was  let  to  Mr.  Osborne,  who,  it  was  said, 
was  going  to  be  made  a  peer,  and  on  their  walls  hung 
the  stupendous  presentments  of  him  and  his  wife.  And 
Claude  had  married  his  sister:  everything  came  to  those 
who  had  cheque-books.  Well,  perhaps  the  Ascot  week 
would  make  things  pleasanter  again;  he  had  a  book 
there  which  could  hardly  prove  a  disappointment.  If 


THEOSBORNES  211 

it  did  —  but   so  untoward   a  possibility  presented  no 
features  that  were  at  all  attractive  to  contemplate. 

He  finished  his  lunch  and  then  made  a  more  detailed 
tour  of  the  flat.  It  was  delightfully  furnished  (probably 
Uncle  Alf  was  responsible  for  all  this,  since  it  was  clearly 
out  of  the  ken  of  any  other  Osborne),  and  everything 
breathed  of  that  luxurious  sort  of  simplicity  which  is  so 
far  beyond  the  reach  of  those  who  have  to  make  sovereigns 
exercise  their  utmost  power  of  purchase.  By  the  way, 
he  had  taken  a  sovereign  which  was  lying  about  on 
Claude's  dressing-table  and  given  it  to  the  cook;  he  must 
remember  to  tell  Claude  that  (for  Claude  might  remember, 
if  he  did  not),  and  pay  him.  Next  that  room  was  the 
bathroom,  white-walled  and  white-tiled,  with  all  manner 
of  squirts  and  douches  to  refresh  and  cool.  Then  came 
a  second  bedroom,  then  the  dining  room  in  which  he 
had  just  now  so  delicately  fed,  then  the  drawing  room, 
out  of  which  opened  a  smaller  sitting  room,  clearly 
Claude's.  There  was  a  big  writing  table  in  it,  with 
drawers  on  each  side,  and  Jim  amused  himself  by  opening 
these,  for  they  were  all  unlocked,  and  looking  at  their 
contents.  Certainly  Claude  did  things  handsomely  when 
he  lent  his  flat,  for  in  the  first  drawer  that  Jim  opened  was 
a  box  of  cigarettes,  and  one  of  cigars.  These  latter  smelt 
quite  excellent,  and  Jim  put  back  the  cigarette  he  had  taken 
from  the  other  box  and  took  a  cigar  instead.  In  another 
drawer  were  paper  and  envelopes  stamped  with  a  crest 
(no  doubt  the  outcome  of  the  ingenuity  of  the  Herald's 
College),  in  another  a  pile  of  letters,  some  of  which 
Jim  recognized  to  be  Dora's  handwriting.  This  drawer 
he  closed  again  at  once:  it  was  scarcely  a  temptation 


212  THE    OSBORNES 

not  to  do  so  since  he  only  cared  quite  vaguely  to  know 
what  Dora  found  to  say  to  her  promerso.  In  another 
drawer  were  a  few  photographs,  a  few  invitation  cards, 
an  engagement  book,  and  a  cheque-book.  This  latter 
was  apparently  an  old  one,  for  it  was  stiff  and  full  toward 
the  back  with  counterfoils,  while  the  covers  drooped 
together  halfway  down  it. 

Jim  could  not  resist  opening  this,  nor  did  he  try  to: 
he  wanted  to  know  (and  there  was  no  harm  done  if  he 
did)  what  sort  of  sums  Claude  spent.  But  on  opening 
it  he  saw  that  it  was  not  quite  empty  of  its  cheques  yet, 
the  last  but  one  in  the  book  had  not  been  torn  out,  but 
was  blank,  as  was  also  the  counterfoil.  Then  came 
the  last  counterfoil,  on  which  was  written  the  date,  which 
was  yesterday,  and  a  scrawled  "Books,  Dora,"  and  an 
item  of  some  ^150.  Then  he  turned  over  the  earlier 
counterfoils:  there  was  a  big  cheque  to  Daimler,  no 
doubt  for  his  car,  another  (scandalously  large  it  seemed  to 
Jim)  to  his  tailor,  more  "Books,"  several  entered  simply 
as  "Venice,"  and  several  on  which  there  was  nothing 
written  at  all.  Apparently,  in  such  instances,  Claude 
had  just  drawn  a  cheque  and  not  worried  to  fill  in  the 
counterfoil.  That  again  was  the  sort  of  insouciance  that 
Jim  envied:  it  was  only  possible  to  very  rich  people  or 
remarkably  careless  ones,  whereas  he  was  poor,  but 
remarkably  careful  as  to  the  payment  of  money.  The 
blank  cheque,  forgotten  apparently,  for  the  cheque-book, 
tossed  away  with  a  heap  of  old  invitation  cards,  looked 
as  if  it  was  thought  to  be  finished  with,  was  an  instance 
the  more  of  this  enviable  security  about  money  matters. 
And  Jim  felt  more  Socialistic  than  ever. 


THEOSBORNES  213 

He  shut  the  drawer  up,  and  examined  the  rest  of  the 
room,  having  lit  the  cigar  which  he  had  taken  from  the 
box  and  which  he  found  to  be  as  excellent  to  the  palate  as 
it  was  to  the  nostril.  The  room  reeked  of  quiet  opulence: 
there  was  a  bookcase  full  of  well-bound  volumes,  a  pianola 
of  the  latest  type,  two  or  three  more  prints,  the  overflow 
from  the  dining  room,  and  a  couple  of  Empire  arm-chairs, 
in  which  comfort  and  beauty  were  mated,  and  on  the 
floor  was  an  Aubusson  carpet.  And  though  feeling 
envious  and  Socialistic,  Jim  felt  that  it  would  be  quite 
possible  to  be  very  comfortable  here  for  the  next  six  or 
seven  weeks. 

Like  most  people  who  have  suffered  all  their  lives  from 
want  of  money,  and  have  yet  managed  to  live  in  a 
thoroughly  extravagant  manner,  Jim  had  been  so  often 
under  obligations  to  others  that  Heaven,  suiting,  we 
must  suppose,  the  back  to  the  burden,  had  made  him  by 
this  time  unconscious  of  such.  He  accepted  such  offers 
as  this  of  the  flat  with  a  gay  light-heartedness  that  was  not 
without  its  charm,  and  made  also  the  undoubted  difficulty 
of  conferring,  no  less  than  accepting,  a  favour  gracefully, 
easy  to  the  giver.  But  he  did  not  like  Claude,  and  had 
a  sufficiently  firm  conviction  that  Claude  did  not  like  him, 
to  take  the  edge  off  his  enjoyment.  Why  Claude  should 
not  like  him,  he  could  not  tell:  he  had  always  been  more 
than  pleasant  to  his  brother-in-law,  and  when  they  met, 
they  always,  owing  to  a  natural  and  easy  knack  of  volu- 
bility which  Jim  possessed,  got  on  quite  nicely  together. 

This  minute  inspection  of  the  flat  had  taken  Jim  some 
time,  and  when  it  was  completed  he  strolled  out  to  pay 
a  call  or  two,  see  if  there  was  any  racing  news  of  interest, 


214  THEOSBORNES 

and  go  round  to  the  Osbornes  to  have  a  talk  to  Dora, 
whom  he  had  not  seen  since  she  had  returned  from 
Venice,  and  in  person  express  his  gratitude  for  the  timely 
gift  of  the  flat.  He  found  her  in,  but  alone:  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Osborne  were  expected  that  afternoon. 

"It  was  really  extremely  kind  of  Claude  to  think  of  it," 
he  said,  "and  most  opportune.  I  had  the  rottenest 
Epsom,  and  really  was  at  my  wits'  end.  You  are  probably 
beginning  to  forget  what  that  means.  Oh,  by  the  way, 
I  found  a  sovereign  of  Claude's  on  his  dressing  table 
and  gave  it  to  the  cook  in  order  to  promote  good  feeling  — 
or  was  it  ten  shillings?" 

Dora  laughed.  This  was  characteristic  of  Jim,  but 
she  was  used  to  it,  and  did  not  make  sermon  to  him. 

"I  feel  quite  certain  it  was  a  sovereign,  Jim,"  she 
said.  "I  will  bet,  if  you  like.  We  will  ask  the  cook 
what  you  gave  her." 

"I  daresay  you  are  right.  Ah,  you  expect  Claude, 
though.  I  will  give  it  him  when  he  comes  in.  Have 
you  seen  mother  ?  She  and  I  are  not  on  terms  just  now. 
But  it  does  not  matter,  as  I  have  Claude's  flat." 

"What  have  you  been  doing?" 

"Nothing;  she  did  it  all.  I  hadn't  the  least  wish  to 
cut  her.  In  fact,  I  wanted  to  stay  in  Eaton  Place,  until 
the  flat  came  along,  and  when  it  did,  I  wished  to  give  her 
a  slice  of  my  luck,  and  I  asked  her  to  lunch.  She  said 
'No,'  but  sighed.  The  sigh  was  not  about  lunch  but 
about  the  flat.  She  would  have  liked  it.  By  Jove,  Dora, 
you're  nicely  housed  here.  It's  a  neat  little  box,  as  Mr. 
O.  would  say." 

Dora  gave  a  short  laugh,  not  very  merry  in  tone. 


THEOSBORNES  215 

"Ah,  that's  one  of  the  things  we  mustn't  say,"  she 
observed.  "I've  been  catching  it  from  Claude.  He  says 
he's  respectful  to  my  family,  but  I'm  not  respectful  to  his." 

Jim  paused  with  his  cup  in  his  hand. 

"Been  having  a  row?"  he  asked.  "Make  it  .up  at 
once.  Say  you  were  wrong." 

"But  I  wasn't,"  said  she. 

"That  doesn't  matter.  What  does  matter  is  that  you 
should  let  the  purseholders  have  everything  all  their  own 
way.  Then  everything  slips  along  easily  and  comfortably." 

"Oh,  money!  "she  said.  "Who  cares  about  the  money?" 

Jim  opened  his  eyes  very  wide. 

"I  do  very  much,"  he  said,  "and  so  did  you  up  till 
a  year  ago.  It  is  silly  to  say  that  money  doesn't  matter 
just  because  you  have  a  lot.  It's  only  the  presence  of  a 
lot  that  enables  you  to  say  so." 

"Yes,  that's  true,"  she  said,  "and  it  adds  to  one's 
pleasure.  But  it  doesn't  add  to  one's  happiness,  not 
one  jot.  I'm  just  as  capable  of  being  unhappy  now  as 
ever  I  was.  Not  that  I  am  unhappy  in  the  least." 

Jim  nodded  sympathetically. 

"You  look  rather  worried,"  he  said.  "So  you've 
been  having  a  bit  of  a  turn-up  with  Claude.  That's  the 
worst  of  being  married ;  if  I  have  a  shindy  with  anyone  I 
walk  away,  and  unless  the  other  fellow  follows,  the  shindy 
stops.  But  you  can't  walk  away  from  your  husband." 

Dora  was  silent  a  moment,  considering  whether  she 
should  talk  to  her  brother  about  these  things  which 
troubled  her  or  not.  She  had  tried  to  find  a  solution  for 
them  by  herself,  but  had  been  unable,  and  she  had  a 
great  opinion  of  his  practical  shrewdness.  It  was  not 


216  THEOSBORNES 

likely  that  he  would  suggest  anything  fine  or  altruistic 
because  he  was  not  of  that  particular  build,  but  he  might 
be  able  to  suggest  something. 

"Yes,  we've  been  having  a  bit  of  a  turn-up,  as  you  call 
it,"  she  said.  "That  doesn't  matter  so  much;  but  what 
bothers  me  rather  is  our  totally  different  way  of  looking 
at  things.  I'm  awfully  fond  of  Dad,  I  am  really,  but  it 
would  be  childish  if  I  pretended  that  I  don't  see  —  well  — 
humorous  things  about  him.  You  see,  one  has  either 
to  be  amused  by  such  things  —  I  only  learned  that  yes- 
terday from  Uncle  Alf  —  or  else  take  them  tragically. 
At  Venice  I  took  them  tragically.  I  thought  it  dreadful 
that  he  liked  to  see  the  sugar  factory  better  than  any- 
thing else.  And  if  it  isn't  dreadful,  it's  got  to  be  funny: 
it's  either  funny  or  vulgar.  There's  nothing  else  for  it 
to  be.  And  then  Claude  —  oh,  dear!  I  told  him  he 
was  at  liberty  to  laugh  at  you  and  mother  as  much  as 
he  chose,  but  he  didn't  appear  to  want  to.  I  don't 
think  he's  got  any  sense  of  humour:  there  are  heaps 
and  heaps  of  ridiculous  things  about  you  both." 

"Good  gracious!  You  never  thought  he  had  any 
sense  of  humour,  did  you?"  asked  Jim  earnestly. 

"I  don't  know.  I  don't  think  I  thought  about  it  at  all. 
And  that's  not  the  worst." 

Jim  put  his  head  on  one  side,  and  Dora's  estimate  of 
his  shrewdness  was  justified. 

"Do  you  mean  that  you  are  beginning  to  mind  about 
his  being  —  er  —  not  quite ?"  he  asked  delicately. 

Dora  nodded. 

"Yes,  that's  it,"  she  said. 

"What  a  pity!    I  hoped  you  wouldn't  mind.     You 


THEOSBORNES  217 

appeared  not  to  at  first.  One  hoped  you  would  get  used 
to  it  before  it  got  on  your  nerves.  Can't  you  put  it  away, 
wrap  it  up. and  put  it  away?" 

"Do  you  suppose  I  keep  it  in  front  of  me  for  fun?" 
she  asked.  "Oh,  Jim,  is  it  beastly  of  me  to  tell  you? 
There's  really  no  one  else  to  tell.  I  couldn't  tell  mother 
because  she's  —  well,  she's  not  very  helpful  about  that 
sort  of  thing,  and  talks  about  true  nobility  being  the 
really  important  thing,  that  and  truth  and  honour  and 
kindness.  That  is  such  parrot- talk,  you  know;  it  is 
just  repeating  what  we  have  all  heard  a  million  of  times. 
No  doubt  it  is  true,  but  what  if  one  can't  realize  it?  I 
used  always  to  suppose  Shakespeare  was  a  great  author, 
till  I  saw  'Hamlet,'  which  bored  me.  And  I  had  to 
tell  somebody.  What  am  I  to  do  ?" 

"  Why,  apply  to  Claude  what  you've  been  saying  about 
Mr.  Osborne,"  said  he.  "  There  are  things  about  him 
which  are  dreadful  unless  you  tell  yourself  they  are  funny. 
Well,  tell  yourself  they  are  funny.  I  hope  they  are. 
Won't  that  help?" 

"I  don't  know.  Perhaps  it  might.  But  there  are 
things  that  are  funny  at  a  little  distance  which  cease  to 
amuse  when  they  come  quite  close.  Uncle  Alf  made  me 
think  that  the  humorous  solution  would  solve  every- 
thing. But  it  doesn't  really;  it  only  solves  the  things 
that  don't  really  matter." 

Dora  dined  quietly  at  home  that  night  with  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Osborne  and  Claude,  and  after  dinner  had  a  talk 
to  her  mother-in-law  while  the  other  two  lingered  in  the 
dining  room. 


«i8  THEOSBORNES 

"Why,  it  was  like  seeing  a  fire  through  the  window 
to  welcome  you  when  you  got  home  of  a  cold  evening," 
said  Mrs.  Osborne  cordially,  "to  see  your  face  at  the 
head  of  the  stairs,  my  dear.  Mr.  Osborne's  been  won- 
dering all  the  way  up  whether  you  and  Claude  would  be 
dining  at  home  to-night.  Bless  you,  if  he's  said  it  once 
he's  said  it  fifty  times." 

"I  love  being  wanted,"   said  Dora  quickly. 

"Well,  it's  wanted  that  you  are,  by  him  and  me  and 
everyone  else.  And,  my  dear,  I'm  glad  to  think  you'll 
be  by  my  elbow  at  all  my  parties,  to  help  me,  and  say 
who's  who.  And  we  lead  off  to-morrow  with  a  big  dinner. 
There's  thirty  to  table  and  a  reception  after,  just  to  let 
it  be  known  as  how  the  house  is  open  again,  and  all  and 
sundry  will  be  welcome.  Of  course,  you'll  have  your 
own  engagements  as  well,  my  dear,  and  many  of  them, 
I'm  sure,  and  no  wonder,  and  there's  nothing  I  wish  less 
than  to  stand  in  the  way  of  them,  but  whenever  you've 
an  evening  to  spare,  you  give  a  thought  to  me,  and  say 
to  yourself,  'Well,  if  I'm  wanted  nowhere  else,  there's 
mother'll  be  looking  out  for  me  at  the  head  of  the  stairs.' ' 

Dora  laughed. 

"I  accept  your  invitations  to  all  your  balls,  and  all 
your  concerts,  and  as  many  as  possible  of  your  dinners," 
she  said.  "You'll  get  sick  of  the  sight  of  my  face  before 
the  season  is  over." 

"That  I  never  shall,  my  dear,"  said  Mrs.  Osborne, 
"nor  afterward,  neither.  And  you'll  come  down  to 
Grote,  won't  you,  after  July,  and  stay  quiet  there  till  the 
little  blessed  one  comes,  if  you  don't  mind  my  alluding 
to  it,  my  dear,  as  I'm  going  to  be  its  grandmother,  though 


THEOSBORNES  219 

it's  a  thing  I  never  should  do  if  there  was  anybody  else 
but  you  and  me  present.  Lord,  and  it  seems  only  yes- 
terday that  I  was  expecting  my  own  first-born,  and 
Mr.  O.  in  such  a  taking  as  you  never  see,  and  me  so 
calm  and  all,  just  longing  for  my  time  to  come,  and  think- 
ing nothing  at  all  of  the  pain,  for  such  as  there  is  don't 
count  against  seeing  your  baby.  But  you  leave  Claude 
to  me,  and  I'll  pull  him  through.  Bless  him,  I  warrant 
he'll  need  more  cheering  and  comforting  than  you.  And 
are  you  sure  your  rooms  are  comfortable  here,  dearie? 
I  thought  the  suite  at  the  back  of  the  house  would  be 
more  to  your  liking  than  the  front,  being  quieter,  for, 
to  be  sure,  if  you  are  so  good  as  to  come  and  keep  us  old 
folks  company,  the  least  we  can  do  is  to  see  that  you 
have  things  to  your  taste  and  don't  get  woke  by  those 
roaring  motor-buses  or  the  stream  of  vegetables  for  the 
market." 

"But  they  are  delightful,"  said  Dora.  "They've 
given  me  the  dearest  little  sitting  room  with  bedroom 
and  bathroom  all  together." 

Mrs.  Osborne  beamed  contentedly.  She  had  had  a 
couple  of  days  without  any  return  of  pain,  and  as  she 
said,  she  had  had  a  better  relish  for  her  dinner  to-night 
than  for  many  days. 

"  Well,  then,  let's  hope  we  shall  all  be  comfortable  and 
happy,"  she  said.  "And  I  don't  mind  telling  you  now, 
my  dear,  that  I've  been  out  of  sorts  and  not  up  to  my 
victuals  for  a  fortnight  past,  but  to-day  I  feel  hearty 
again,  though  I  get  tired  easily  still.  But  don't  you 
breathe  a  word  of  that,  promise  me,  to  Mr.  Osborne 
or  Claude,  for  what  with  the  honour  as  is  going  to  be 


220  THEOSBORNES 

done  to  Mr.  O.  and  the  thought  of  his  grandchild  getting 
closer,  and  him  back  to  work  again,  which,  after  all, 
suits  him  best,  I  wouldn't  take  the  edge  off  his  enjoy- 
ment if  you  were  to  ask  me  on  your  bended  knees,  which 
I  should  do,  if  he  thought  I  was  out  of  sorts.  Lord, 
there  he  comes  now,  arm-in-arm  with  Claude.  I  declare 
he's  like  a  boy  again,  with  the  thought  of  all  as  is 
coming." 

The  evening  of  the  next  day,  accordingly,  saw,  with 
flare  of  light  and  blare  of  band,  the  beginning  of  the  hos- 
pitalities of  No.  92  Park  Lane,  the  doors  of  which,  so  it 
appeared  to  Dora,  were  never  afterward  shut  day  or 
night,  except  during  the  week-ends  when  the  doors  of 
Grote  flew  open  and  the  scene  of  hospitality  changed 
to  that  of  the  country.  Yet  cordial  though  it  all  was,  it 
was  insensate  hospitality  —  hospitality  gone  mad.  Had 
some  hotel  announced  that  anyone  of  any  consequence 
could  dine  there  without  charge,  and  ask  friends  to  dine  on 
the  same  easy  terms,  such  an  offer  would  have  diverted 
the  crowds  of  carriages  from  Park  Lane,  and  sent  them 
to  the  hotel  instead.  Full  as  her  programme  orig- 
inally was,  Mrs.  Osborne  could  not  resist  the  pleasure  of 
added  hospitalities,  and  little  dances,  got  up  in  im- 
promptu fashion  with  much  telephoning  and  leaving  of 
cards,  were  wedged  in  between  the  big  ones,  and  became 
big  themselves  before  the  night  arrived.  Scores  of 
guests,  utterly  unknown  to  their  hosts,  crowded  the 
rooms,  and  for  them  all,  known  and  unknown  alike,  Mrs. 
Osborne  had  the  same  genial  and  genuine  cordiality  of 
welcome.  It  was  sufficient  for  her  that  they  had  crossed 
her  threshold  and  would  drink  Mr.  O.'s  champagne  and 


THEOSBORNES  221 

eat  her  capons;  she  was  glad  to  see  them  all.  She  had  a 
shocking  memory  for  faces,  but  that  made  no  difference, 
since  nothing  could  exceed  the  geniality  of  her  greet- 
ing to  those  whom  she  had  never  set  eyes  on  before.  It 
was  a  good  moment,  too,  when,  not  so  long  after  the 
beginning  of  her  hospitalities,  her  secretary,  whose  duty 
it  was  to  enter  the  names  of  all  callers  in  the  immense 
volume  dedicated  to  that  purpose,  reported  that  a  second 
calling  book  was  necessary,  since  the  space  allotted  to  the 
letters  with  which  the  majority  of  names  began  was  full. 
She  could  not  have  imagined  a  year  ago  that  this  would 
ever  happen,  yet  here  at  the  beginning  of  her  second 
season  only,  more  space  had  to  be  found.  And  Dora's 
name  for  the  second  volume,  "Supplement  to  the  Court 
Guide,"  was  most  gratifying.  Alf's  allusion  to  the 
"London  Directory,"  though  equally  true,  would  not 
have  been  so  satisfactory. 

But  her  brave  and  cheerful  soul  needed  all  its  gallan- 
try, for  it  was  an  incessant  struggle  with  her  to  conceal 
the  weariness  and  discomfort  which  were  always  with  her, 
and  which  she  was  so  afraid  she  would,  in  spite  of  her- 
self, betray  to  others.  There  were  days  of  pain,  too, 
not  as  yet  very  severe,  but  of  a  sort  that  frightened  her, 
and  her  appetite  failed  her.  This  she  could  conceal, 
without  difficulty  for  the  most  part,  since  the  times  were 
few  on  which  her  husband  was  not  sitting  at  some  dis- 
tance from  her,  with  many  guests  intervening;  but  once 
or  twice  when  they  were  alone  she  was  afraid  he  would 
notice  her  abstention,  and  question  her.  Her  high 
colour  also  began  to  fade  from  her  cheeks  and  lips,  and 
she  made  one  daring  but  tremulous  experiment  with 


222  THEOSBORNES 

rouge  and  lip-salve  to  hide  this.  She  sent  her  maid  out 
of  the  room  before  the  attempt,  and  then  applied  the  pig- 
ments, but  with  disastrous  results.  "Lor,  Mr.  O.  will 
think  it's  some  woman  of  the  music  halls  instead  of 
his  wife,"  she  said  to  herself,  and  wiped  off  again  the 
unusual  brilliance. 

But  though  sometimes  her  courage  faltered,  it  never 
gave  way.  She  had  determined  not  to  spoil  these  weeks 
for  her  husband.  It  was  to  be  a  blaze  of  triumph.  After- 
ward she  would  go  to  the  doctor  and  learn  that  she 
had  been  frightening  herself  to  no  purpose,  or  that  there 
was  something  wrong. 

And  those  endless  hospitalities,  this  stream  of  people 
who  passed  in  and  out  of  the  house,  though  they  tired  her 
they  also  served  to  divert  her  and  take  her  mind  off  her 
discomforts  and  alarms.  She  had  to  be  in  her  place, 
though  Dora  took  much  of  the  burden  of  it  off  her  shoul- 
ders, to  shake  hands  with  streams  of  people  and  say  — 
which  was  perfectly  true  —  how  pleased  she  was  to  see 
them.  Friends  from  Sheffield,  for  she  never  in  her  life 
dropped  an  old  acquaintance,  came  to  stay,  and  the 
pleasurable  anticipation  she  had  had  of  letting  them  see 
"a  bit  of  real  London  life"  fell  short  of  the  reality.  Best 
of  all,  Sir  Thomas  and  Lady  Ewart  were  in  the  house 
when  the  list  of  honours  appeared  in  the  paper. 

It  happened  dramatically,  and  the  drama  of  it  was 
planned  and  contrived  by  Claude.  He  came  down 
rather  late  to  breakfast,  having  given  orders  that  this 
morning  no  papers  were  to  be  put  in  their  usual  place  in 
the  dining  room,  and  went  straight  up  to  his  father. 

"Good  morning,  my  lord,"  he  said. 


THEOSBORNES  223 

"Hey,  what?"  said  Mr.  Osborne.  "Poking  your  fun 
at  me,  are  you?" 

"There's  something  about  you  in  the  papers,  my  lord." 

"Well,  I  never!    Let's  see,"  said  Mr.  Osborne. 

He  unfolded  the  paper  Claude  had  brought  him. 

"My  lady,"  he  said  across  the  table  to  his  wife, 
"this'll  interest  you.  List  of  honours.  Peerages,  Edward 
Osborne,  Esquire,  M.  P." 

It  was  a  triumphant  success.  Sir  Thomas  actually 
thought  that  it  was  news  to  them  both,  and  went  so  far 
as  to  lay  down  his  knife  and  fork. 

"Bless  my  soul!"  he  said.  "Well,  I'm  sure  there 
never  was  an  honour  more  deservedly  won,  nor  what 
will  be  more  dignifiedly  worn." 

Mr.  Osborne  could  not  keep  it  up. 

"Well,  well,"  he  said,  "of  course  we've  known  all 
along ;  but  Claude  would  have  his  joke  and  pretend  it  was 
news  to  us.  Thank  ye,  Sir  Thomas,  I'm  sure.  Maria, 
my  dear,  I'm  told  your  new  coronet's  come  home.  Pass 
it  to  my  lady,  Claude." 

As  if  by  a  conjuring  trick,  he  produced  from  under 
the  table  cloth  an  all-round  tiara  of  immense  diamonds, 
which  had  been  previously  balanced  on  his  knees. 

Mrs.  Osborne  had  had  no  idea  of  this;  that  part  of 
the  ceremony  had  been  kept  from  her. 

"Put  it  on,  Maria,  my  dear,"  he  said,  "and  if  there's 
a  peeress  in  the  land  as  better  deserves  her  coronet  than 
you,  I  should  be  proud  to  meet  her.  Let  the  Honourable 
Claude  settle  it  comfortable  for  you,  my  dear.  Claude, 
my  boy,  I'm  jealous  of  you  because  you're  an  honour- 
able, which  is  more  than  your  poor  old  dad  ever  was." 


224  THEOSBORNES 

The  deft  hands  of  the  Honourable  adjusted  the  tiara 
for  her  and  she  got  up  to  salute  the  donor. 

"If  it  isn't  the  measure  of  my  head  exactly!"  she 
said.  "Well,  I  never,  and  me  not  knowing  a  word 
about  it!" 

Meantime,  as  June  drew  to  its  close,  in  this  whirl  of 
engagements  and  socialities,  the  estrangement  between 
Dora  and  Claude  grew  (though  not  more  acute  in  itself) 
more  of  a  habit,  and  the  very  passage  of  time,  instead  of 
softening  it,  rendered  it  harder  to  soften.  Had  they 
been  alone  in  their  flat,  it  is  probable  that  some  intolerable 
moment  would  have  come,  breaking  down  that  which 
stood  between  them,  or  in  any  case  compelling  them 
to  talk  it  out;  or,  a  thing  which  would  have  been  better 
than  nothing,  bringing  this  cold  alienation  up  to  the 
hot  level  of  a  quarrel,  which  could  have  been  made  up, 
and  which  when  made  up  might  have  carried  away  with 
it  much  of  the  cause  of  this  growing  constraint.  As  it  was, 
there  was  no  quarrel,  and  thus  there  was  nothing  to  make 
up.  Claude,  on  his  side,  believed  that  his  wife  still 
rather  resented  certain  remarks  he  had  made  to  her  at 
Venice  and  here  on  the  subject  of  her  attitude  toward 
his  father,  contrasting  it  unfavourably  with  the  appre- 
ciation and  kindness  which  his  family  had  shewn  hers. 
In  his  rather  hard,  thoroughly  well-meaning  and  per- 
fectly just  manner  he  examined  and  re-examined  any 
cause  of  complaint  which  she  could  conceive  herself 
to  have  on  the  subject,  and  entirely  acquitted  himself  of 
blame.  He  did  not  see  that  he  could  have  done  differently : 
he  had  not  been  unkind,  only  firm,  and  his  firmness  was 
.based  upon  his  sense  of  right. 


THEOSBORNES  225 

But  in  this  examination  he,  of  course,  utterly  failed  to 
recognize  the  real  ground  of  the  estrangement,  which 
was,  as  Dora  knew,  not  any  one  particular  speech  or 
action  of  his,  but  rather  the  spirit  and  the  nature  which 
lay  behind  every  speech,  every  action.  This  she  was 
incapable  of  telling  him,  and  even  if  she  had  been  able 
to  do  so,  no  good  end  would  have  been  served  by  it.  She 
had  married  him,  not  knowing  him,  or  at  the  least  blinded 
by  superficialities,  and  now,  getting  below  those,  or 
getting  used  to  them,  she  found  that  there  were  things 
to  which  she  could  not  get  used,  but  which,  on  the  con- 
trary, seemed  to  her  to  be  getting  every  day  more  glaringly 
disagreeable  to  her.  He,  not  knowing  this,  did  his  best 
to  remove  what  he  believed  had  been  the  cause  of  their 
estrangement  by  praise  and  commendation  of  what  he 
called  to  himself  her  altered  behaviour.  For  there  was 
no  doubt  whatever  that  now,  at  any  rate,  Dora  was  behav- 
ing delightfully  to  his  parents.  She  took  much  of  the 
work  of  entertaining  off  Mrs.  Osborne's  hands;  made 
but  few  engagements  of  her  own,  in  order  to  be  more 
actively  useful  in  the  house;  and  was  in  every  sense  the 
most  loyal  and  dutiful  of  daughters-in-law.  She  also 
very  gently  and  tactfully  got  leave  to  revise  Mrs.  Osborne's 
visiting  list,  and  drew  a  somewhat  ruthless  lead  pencil 
through  a  considerable  number  of  the  names.  For  in  the 
early  days  to  leave  a  card  meant,  as  a  matter  of  course, 
to  be  asked  to  the  house.  This  luxuriant  and  exotic 
garden  wanted  a  little  weeding. 

All  this  seemed  to  Claude  to  be  the  happy  fruits  of  his 
criticism,  and  the  consciousness  of  it  in  his  mind  did  not 
improve  the  flavour  of  his  speeches  to  Dora.  They  were 


226  THEOSBORNES 

but  little  alone,  owing  to  the  high  pressure  of  their  days; 
but  one  evening,  about  a  fortnight  after  they  had  moved 
into  Park  Lane,  he  found  her  resting  in  her  sitting  room 
before  dressing. 

"There  you  are,  dear,"  he  said.  "How  right  of  you 
to  rest  a  little.  What  have  you  been  doing?" 

"There  were  people  to  lunch,"  said  she;  "and  then  I 
drove  down  with  Dad  to  the  House.  He  was  not  there 
long,  so  I  waited  for  him,  and  we  had  a  turn  in  the  Park. 
Then  a  whole  host  of  people  came  to  tea,  and  I  —  I 
multiplied  myself." 

"They  are  ever  so  pleased  with  you,"  said  Claude, 
"and  I'm  sure  I  don't  wonder.  Ever  since  they  came 
up  you  have  simply  devoted  yourself  to  them." 

In  his  mind  was  the  thought,  "Ever  since  I  spoke  to 
you  about  it."  It  was  not  verbally  expressed,  but  the 
whole  speech  rang  with  it.  Dora  tried  for  a  moment, 
following  Uncle  Alf's  plan,  to  find  something  humorous 
about  it,  failed  dismally,  and  tried  instead  to  disregard  it. 

"I'm  glad,"  she  said,  "that  one  is  of  use." 

Then  she  made  a  further  effort . 

"I  think  it  was  an  excellent  plan  that  we  should  come 
here,"  she  added.  "It  suits  us,  doesn't  it?  and  it  suits 
them." 

Claude  smiled  at  her,  leaning  over  the  head  of  the  sofa 
where  she  lay. 

"I  knew  you  would  find  it  a  success,"  he  said.  "I 
felt  quite  certain  it  would  be." 

Again  Dora  tried  to  shut  her  ears  to  the  personal  note 
—  this  ring  of  "How  right  I  was!" 

"It  suits  Jim,  too,"  she  said.    "It  really  was  kind 


THEOSBORNES  227 

of  you  to  let  him  have  the  flat.  May  tells  me  she  went 
to  dine  there  last  night.  He  had  a  bridge  party." 

Claude  laughed. 

"He's  certainly  making  the  most  of  it,"  he  said;  "  just 
as  I  meant  him  to  do.  I  think  I'm  like  Dad  in  that.  Do 
you  remember  how  he  treated  us  over  the  Venice  house 
this  year?  Not  a  penny  for  us  to  pay.  Jim's  giving 
lots  of  little  parties,  I'm  told,  and  Parker  came  round 
to  me  yesterday  to  ask  if  he  should  order  some  more  wine, 
as  Jim's  nearly  finished  it.  Also  cigars  and  cigarettes. 
Of  course  I  told  him  to  order  whatever  was  wanted.  I 
hate  doing  things  by  halves.  The  household  books  will 
be  something  to  smile  at.  But  he's  having  a  rare  good 
time.  It's  not  much  entertaining  he  has  been  able  to  do 
all  his  life  up  till  now." 

Dora  sat  up. 

"But  Claude,  do  you  mean  he's  drinking  your  wine 
and  letting  you  pay  for  all  the  food?"  she  asked. 

"Yes.  It's  my  own  fault.  I  ought  to  have  locked 
up  the  cellar,  and  made  it  clear  that  he  would  pay  for 
his  own  chickens.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  never  struck 
me  that  he  wouldn't.  But  as  that  hasn't  occurred  to 
him,  I  can't  remind  him  of  it." 

"But  you  must  tell  him  he's  got  to  pay  for  things," 
said  Dora.  "Why,  he  might  as  well  order  clothes  and, 
just  because  he  was  in  your  flat,  expect  you  to  pay  for 
them!" 

"Oh,  I  can't  tell  him,"  said  Claude.  "It  would  look 
as  if  I  grudged  him  things.  I  don't  a  bit:  I  like  people 
to  have  a  good  time  at  my  expense.  Poor  devil!  he 
had  a  rotten  Derby  week;  no  wonder  he  likes  living  on 


228  THEOSBORNES 

the  cheap.  And  it  must  be  beastly  uncomfortable  liv- 
ing on  the  cheap,  if  it's  your  own  cheap,  so  to  speak. 
I  expect  you  and  I  would  be  just  the  same  if  we  were  poor." 

But  the  idea  was  insupportable  to  Dora,  and  the  more 
so  because  of  the  way  in  which  Claude  took  it.  Gen- 
erous he  was,  no  one  could  be  more  generous,  but  there 
was  behind  it  all  a  sort  of  patronizing  attitude.  He  gave 
cordially  indeed,  but  with  the  cordiality  was  a  self- 
conscious  pleasure  in  his  own  open-handedness  and  a  con- 
tempt scarcely  veiled  of  what  he  gave.  And  the  worst 
of  all  was  that  Jim  should  have  taken  advantage  of  this 
insouciance  about  money  affairs  that  sprang  from  the  fact 
that  he  had  no  need  to  worry  about  money.  Claude 
did  not  like  Jim,  Dora  felt  certain  of  that,  and  this  made 
it  impossible  that  Jim  should  take  advantage  of  his 
bounty.  It  was  an  indebtedness  she  could  not  tolerate 
in  her  brother. 

"What's  there  to  fuss  about?"  Claude  went  on.  "If 
the  whole  thing  runs  into  a  hundred  and  fifty  pounds, 
it  won't  hurt.  And,  after  all,  he's  your  brother,  dear. 
I  like  being  good  to  your  kin." 

Dora  was  not  doing  Claude  an  injustice  when  she 
told  herself  that  his  irreproachable  conduct  to  her  family 
was  in  his  mind.  It  was  there ;  he  did  not  mean  it  to  be 
in  evidence,  but  insensibly  and  unintentionally  it  tinged 
his  words.  The  whole  thing  was  kind,  kind,  kind,  but 
it  was  consciously  kind.  That  made  the  whole  difference. 

"But  it  can't  be,"  she  said.  "If  you  won't  speak  to 
Jim  about  it,  I  will.  It  is  impossible  that  he  should 
drink  your  wine  and  smoke  your  cigars  and  have  dinner 
parties  at  your  expense.  I  can't  let  him  do  that  sort  of 


THEOSBORNES  229 

thing,  if  I  can  possibly  help  it.    I  would  much  sooner 
pay  myself  than  that  you  should  pay  for  him." 

"My  dear,  what  a  fuss  about  nothing!"  said  Claude. 
"It  isn't  as  if  it  mattered  to  me  whether  I  pay  for  his 
soup  and  cutlet " 

"No,  that's  just  it,"  said  Dora  quickly.  "That's 
why  you  mustn't.  If  it  cost  you  something-  Oh, 
Claude,  I  don't  think  I  can  make  you  understand," 
she  said.  "Anyhow,  I  shall  tell  Jim  what  I  think;  and 
if  the  poor  wretch  hasn't  got  any  money,  then  I  must  pay." 

"Oh,  I  don't  suppose  he's  got  any  money,"  said 
Claude;  "and  as  for  your  paying,  my  dear,  what  dif- 
ference does  that  make  ?  I  give  you  your  allowance  - 
and  I  wish  you'd  say  you  wanted  more,  for  Uncle  Alf's 
always  wondering  whether  you've  got  enough  —  and  you 
want  to  pay  me  out  of  that.  Well,  it's  only  out  of  one 
pocket  and  into  another.  Don't  fuss  about  it,  dear. 
I  wish  I  hadn't  told  you." 

"But  it  isn't  quite  like  that,"  said  Dora.  "I  could 
deny  myself  something  in  order  to  pay,  if  Jim  can't.  I 
can  tell  them  not  to  send  me  the  dress  - 

And  then  the  hopelessness  of  it  all  struck  her.  She 
was  in  the  same  boat  as  her  husband ;  she  could  not  deny 
herself  anything  she  wanted,  because  there  was  no  need 
for  self-denial.  And  without  that  she  could  not  make 
atonement  for  Jim's  behaviour.  Nor  could  she  say  to 
herself  that  he  had  done  it  without  thinking;  Jim  always 
thought  when  there  was  a  question  of  money,  for  that  he 
took  seriously.  It  was  only  his  own  conduct,  his  own 
character,  and  other  little  trifles  of  that  sort  for  which 
he  had  so  light  a  touch,  so  easy  a  rein.  He  had  been 


230  THEOSBORNES 

giving  little  dinners  at  his  flat,  instead  of  dining  out,  as 
he  usually  did.  He  would  never  have  done  that  if  he 
thought  he  was  going  to  pay  for  the  quails  and  the  peaches. 
That  he  should  do  it  was  the  thing  that  was  irremediable 
—  that,  and  the  contemptuous  kindness  of  Claude. 

Claude  saw  there  was  some  feeling  in  her  mind  of 
which  he  did  not  grasp  the  force.  She  wanted  to  pay 
herself,  or  to  think  she  paid,  for  Jim's  hospitalities.  It 
did  not  make  a  pennyworth  of  difference.  He  would 
pay  a  cheque  into  her  account,  which  would  make  her 
square  again,  and  she  would  never  notice  it. 

"Just  as  you  like,  dear,"  he  said;  "but  you  mustn't 
tell  Jim  you  are  doing  it.  He  would  think  that  I  was 
reluctant  to  pay  for  his  food  and  drinks;  and  I'm  not. 
I  can't  stand  being  thought  mean.  There's  no  excuse 
for  a  fellow  with  plenty  of  shekels  being  mean." 

"Oh,  you  are  not  that,"  said  Dora  quickly,  her  voice 
without  volition  following  the  train  of  thought  in  her  mind. 

"No,  dear,  I  hope  not,"  said  he.  "And,  believe  me, 
I  haven't  got  two  ill  feelings  to  rib  against  each  other 
with  regard  to  Jim.  It's  only  by  chance  I  knew.  If 
there'd  been  another  box  of  cigars  in  the  flat,  and  a  few 
more  dozen  champagne,  Parker  would  never  have  come 

to  me.  As  for  the  household  books why,  dear,  they'd 

have  been  sent  up  to  you,  and  I  bet  you'd  never  have 
seen.  No,  it's  just  a  chance  as  has  put  us  in  the  knowl- 
edge of  it  all,  and  I  for  one  should  hate  to  take  advantage 
of  it.  So  cheer  up,  dear!  Pay  me,  if  it  makes  you 
feel  easier;  but  don't  say  a  word  to  Jim.  I  like  doing  a 
thing  thoroughly,  as  I'm  doing  this." 

He  lingered  a  moment  by  the  door. 


THE    OSBORNES  231 

"Perhaps  that  clears  things  up  a  bit,  Dora,"  he  said, 
with  a  touch  of  wistfulness  in  his  voice. 

And  Dora  tried,  tried  to  think  it  did.  She  tried  also 
to  put  all  possible  simplicity  into  her  voice  as  she  an- 
swered : 

"But  what  is  there  to  clear  up,  dear?"  she  asked. 

"That's  all  right,  then,"  said  he,  and  left  her.  But 
once  outside  the  door,  he  shook  his  head.  Bottled  sim- 
plicity, so  to  speak,  is  not  the  same  as  simplicity  from  the 
spring.  He  was  quite  shrewd  enough  to  know  the 
difference. 

He  was  shrewd  enough  also  to  know  that  he  did  not 
quite  understand  what  had  gone  wrong.  Something 
certainly  had,  and  after  his  compliments  to  her  on  the 
subject  of  the  admirable  way  in  which  she  was  behav- 
ing to  his  parents  he  knew  that  it  was  no  longer  his 
strictures  on  that  subject  that  made  this  barrier.  True 
it  was  that  during  these  past  weeks  neither  of  them  had 
had  much  leisure  or  opportunity  for  intimate  conversa- 
tion; but  there  were  glances,  single  words,  -silences  even 
that  had  passed  between  them  when  they  were  in  Venice 
first  that  had  taken  no  time  if  measured  by  the  scale  of 
minutes  or  seconds,  yet  which  had  been  enough  to  fill 
the  whole  day  with  inward  sunshine.  And  he  had  not 
changed  to  her:  that  he  knew  quite  well;  it  was  not  that 
he  was  less  sensitive  now,  less  receptive  of  signals  of  that 
kind.  For  his  part,  he  gave  them  in  plenty.  Just  now 
he  had  leaned  over  her,  smiling,  when  she  lay  on  her 
sofa,  a  thing  that  in  early  days  would  have  been  sufficient 
to  make  her  glance  at  him,  with  perhaps  a  raised  hand 
that  just  touched  his  face,  with  perhaps  an  "Oh,  Claude!" 


232  THEOSBORNES 

below  her  breath.  Honestly,  as  far  as  any  man  can  be 
honest  with  himself,  he  was  as  hungry  for  that  as  ever;  he 
made  his  private  code  just  as  before,  and  no  answer  came. 
Something  was  out  of  tune:  the  vibrations,  wireless, 
psychical,  did  not  pass  from  her  to  him  as  they  had  done ; 
and  his  own  messages,  so  it  seemed,  throbbed  them- 
selves out,  and  found  none  to  pick  them  up,  but  were 
lost  in  the  unanswering  air. 

Claude  was  of  a  very  simple  and  straightforward 
nature,  but  he  felt  none  the  less  keenly  because  he  was 
not  capable  of  feeling  in  any  subtle  or  complicated 
manner.  Love  had  come  into  his  life,  and  his  part  in  that 
burned  within  him  still,  in  no  way  less  ardently.  He 
believed  that  Dora  had  loved  him  also:  believed  it, 
that  is  to  say,  in  a  sacred  sense :  it  had  been  a  creed  to  him, 
just  as  his  own  love  for  her  was  a  creed.  With  body 
and  soul  he  loved  her,  not  fantastically,  but  deeply,  and 
as  he  left  her  this  afternoon  it  seemed  to  him  that  his 
love  was  being  poured  into  a  vessel  in  which  was  bitter- 
ness. They  had  talked  only  about  what  to  him  was 
a  trivial  thing  —  namely,  the  completeness  with  which 
Jim  had  made  himself  at  home  in  the  flat;  but  in  the 
earlier  days  it  made  no  difference  what  they  talked 
about:  tenderness,  love  came  through  it  all,  like  water 
through  a  quicksand,  engulfing  them.  Their  days 
had  been  passed  in  such  a  quicksand;  they  were  always 
joyfully  foundering  in  it.  But  now  it  was  not  so.  Some 
bitter  encrustation  had  come  on  it  which  bore  their  weight 
quite  easily,  and  there  was  no  risk  of  going  through,  nor 
any  chance  of  it.  Honestly,  he  did  not  believe  that  he 
was  responsible  for  the  formation  of  that  crust.  He  had 


THEOSBORNES  233 

not  changed;  was  not  other  than  he  had  always  been. 
Once  for  a  moment  his  mind  poised  and  hovered  above 
the  truth,  and  he  half  said  to  himself,  "I  wonder  if  she 
finds  me  common  ?  "    But  he  rejected  that :  it  was  the  wild- 
est freak  of  imagination.    Besides,  she  had  not  found 
him  common  at  first,  and  he  had  not  grown  commoner. 
On  the  contrary,  she  had  taught  him  much  —  little  things, 
no  doubt,  but  many  of  them.    He  had  noticed  she  was 
always  polite  to  servants  and  shop  people,  and  though 
a  year  ago  his  tendency  had  been  to  be  rather  short  with 
them,  as  inferiors,  he  had  instinctively  followed  her  exam- 
ple.   That  was  only  one  instance  out  of  many.     But,  so 
the  poor  fellow  told  himself,  they  were  all  little  things  like 
that,  which  could  make  no  real  difference  to  anybody. 
Yet  he  thought  over  this  a  little  longer.    He  himself, 
for  instance,   had  always  known  that  his  father  and 
mother  and  Per  were,  so  to  speak,  "common"  beside 
him.    That  seemed  perfectly  natural,  for  he  had  been 
sent  to  Eton  and  Oxford,  and  had  picked  up  all  sorts  of 
things  as  to  the  way  "gentlemen  behaved,"  which  they 
did  not  know.    He  would  not  press  his  guests  to  have 
more  wine,  as  his  father  did,  when  they  had  refused, 
nor  tempt  them  to  a  second  helping,  as  his  mother  did. 
There  were  little  tricks  of  language,  too,  infinitesimal 
affairs,  but  he,  so  he  thought,  had  got  into  the  way  of  it, 
whereas  they  had  not.  He,  for  instance,  never  said  "  Lor' ," 
as  his  father  constantly  did,  and  his  mother,  if  she  "was 
not  on  the  watch."    But  he  said,  "Good  Lord,"  because 
fellows  said  that,  and  not  the  other.    But  what  did  that 
really  matter?    There  was  a  certain  boisterousness  of 
manner  also  that  characterized  them,  which  he  and  Mrs. 


234  THEOSBORNES 

Per,  for  instance,  who  was  certainly  a  perfect  lady,  did  not 
practise.  Often,  half  in  jest,  his  father  had  said,  "Old 
Claude's  getting  too  much  of  a  swell  for  me" ;  and  though 
he  deprecated  such  a  conclusion,  he  understood  what  was 
meant,  and  knew  that  if  half  was  jest,  half  was  serious. 
But  all  this  made  it  the  more  impossible  that  Dora 
should  find  him  common.  Eton  and  Oxford,  he  felt 
quite  sure,  had  taken  all  the  commonness  out  of  him. 

And  how  little  it  mattered !  He  saw  a  hundred  things, 
day  by  day,  in  which,  if  he  had  been  disposed  to  peer  and 
dissect  and  magnify,  he  would  have  felt  that  there  was 
a  difference  between  his  father  and  himself.  But  how 
measure  so  small  a  thing?  But  what  did  that  matter? 
He  saw  the  kindness,  the  honour,  the  truth  of  his 
parents,  and  he  was  as  likely  to  cease  respecting  and 
caring  for  them  because  of  that  difference  as  he  was 
likely  to  cease  to  love  Dora  because  once  he  had 
found  a  gray  hair  in  her  golden  head.  Besides  —  and  his 
mind  came  back  to  that  —  if  she  found  him  common  now, 
she  must  always  have  found  him  common.  But  nothing 
was  short  of  perfection  in  their  early  weeks  in  Venice. 

Once,  on  his  way  downstairs  to  be  ready  to  greet  Per 
and  his  wife,  who  were  expected  that  evening,  he  half 
turned  on  his  foot,  intending  to  go  back  to  Dora  and 
try  to  get  to  the  bottom  of  it  all.  But  he  knew  that  he 
would  find  nothing  to  say,  for  there  was  nothing  he 
could  suggest  in  which  he  had  fallen  short.  And  even 
as  he  paused,  wondering  if  it  would  be  enough  that  he 
should  go  back  and  say,  "Dora,  what  is  it?"  he  heard 
the  sound  of  the  hall  door  opening.  That  was  Per,  no 
doubt;  he  must  go  down  and  welcome  him. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE  question  of  the  title  had  at  length  been  settled : 
the  simplest  solution  was  felt  to  be  the  best ;  and 
Mrs.  Osborne  need  not  have  felt  so  strange  at  the  thought 
of  changing  her  name,  for  she  only  changed  the  "Mrs." 
into  "Lady."  The  eminently  respectable  name  of 
Osborne,  after  all,  was  associated,  as  seen  on  the  labels 
in  the  fish  market  at  Venice,  with  the  idea  of  hardware 
all  the  world  over,  a  thing  which  Mr.  Osborne  had  been 
anxious  to  "bring  in,"  and,  at  the  same  time,  it  had  a 
faintly  territorial  sound.  Lady  Osborne,  however,  was 
a  little  disappointed;  she  would  so  much  have  enjoyed 
the  necessity  of  getting  quantities  of  table  linen  with  the 
new  initial  worked  on  it.  As  it  was,  it  was  only  neces- 
sary to  have  a  coronet  placed  above  it.  Indeed,  within 
a  week  coronets  blossomed  everywhere,  with  the  sudden- 
ness of  the  coming  of  spring  in  the  South  —  on  the  silver, 
on  the  hot-water  cans,  on  writing  paper  and  envelopes, 
on  the  panels  of  carnages  and  cars,  and  an  enormous 
one,  cut  solid  in  limestone  (the  delivery  of  which 
seriously  impeded  for  a  while  the  traffic  in  Park  Lane), 
was  hoisted  into  its  appropriate  niche  above  the  front 
door  of  No.  92  by  the  aid  of  a  gang  of  perspiring  work- 
men and  a  small  steam  crane.  It  had  been  a  smart 
morning's  work,  so  said  Lord  Osborne,  who  looked  out 
from  the  Gothic  windows  of  his  snuggery  every  now 
and  then  to  see  how  it  was  getting  on;  and  it  became 

335 


236  THEOSBORNES 

even  smarter  in  the  afternoon  when  gold-leaf  had  been 
thickly  laid  on  it. 

It  was  on  the  evening  of  that  day  that  Lady  Osborne 
had  only  a  family  party.  She  had  planned  that  from 
the  very  beginning  of  the  settlement  of  the  summer 
campaign,  had  declined  a  very  grand  invitation  indeed 
in  order  not  to  sacrifice  it,  and  was  going  to  send  it  to 
the  Morning  Post  and  other  papers,  just  as  if  it  had 
been  a  great  party.  Lady  Austell  was  there  and  Jim, 
Dora  and  Claude,  Uncle  Alf,  Per  and  Mrs.  Per,  and  her 
husband  and  herself.  That  was  absolutely  all,  and 
there  was  nobody  of  any  description  coming  in  after- 
ward; nor  was  any  form  of  entertainment,  except  such 
as  they  would  indulge  in  among  themselves,  to  be  pro- 
vided. The  idea  was  simply  to  have  a  family  gather- 
ing, and  not  heed  anybody  else,  for  just  this  one  evening; 
to  be  homely  and  cosy  and  comfortable. 

So  there  they  all  were,  as  Lady  Osborne  thought 
delightedly  to  herself,  as  she  sat  down  with  Jim  on  her 
right  and  Alfred  on  her  left,  just  a  family  party,  and  yet 
they  were  all  folk  of  title  now  except  Alfred.  It  showed 
that  money  was  not  everything,  for  Alfred  was  the  richest 
of  them  all,  while  the  Austells,  who  were  the  "highest," 
were  also  the  poorest.  She  had  looked  forward  immensely 
to  this  evening,  but  not  without  trepidation,  for  if  Alfred 
was  "worried"  he  could  spoil  any  party.  Alfred,  how- 
ever, seemed  to  be  in  the  most  excellent  humour,  and 
when,  as  they  sat  down,  she  said  to  him,  "Well,  Alfred, 
it's  your  turn  next  to  be  made  something,"  he  had  replied 
that  he  had  just  received  a  most  pressing  offer  of  a 
dukedom.  And  the  witticism  was  much  appreciated. 


THEOSBORNES  237 

There  was  no  keeping  relations  apart,  of  course,  since 
they  were  all  relations,  and  Claude  was  sitting  next  his 
father,  with  Mrs.  Per  between  him  and  Jim,  and  it  was 
his  voice  that  his  mother  most  listened  for  with  the 
unconscious  ear  that  hearkens  for  sounds  that  are  most 
beloved.  He  was  apologizing  to  his  father  for  the  mis- 
laying of  some  key. 

"I'm  really  awfully  sorry,"  he  said,  "but  I'm  such 
a  bad  hand  at  keys.  I  never  lock  anything  up  myself. 
Everything's  always  open  in  the  flat,  isn't  it,  Dora? 
But  I'm  very  sorry,  Dad.  It  was  careless." 

"Ah,  well,  never  mind,"  said  his  father.  "And  I'm 
not  one  as  locks  up  overmuch  either.  Give  me  the  key 
of  my  wine  cellar  and  my  cash  box,  and  the  drawer  of 
your  mother's  letters  to  me  when  I  was  a-courting  her, 
and  the  Tantalus,  and  the  drawer  where  I  keep  my 
cheque-book  and  cash  box,  and  I  don't  ask  for  more. 
I'm  no  jailer,  thank  Heaven!  But  don't  you  even  have 
a  key  to  your  cellar,  my  boy?" 

"Oh,  I  suppose  there  is  one,  and  I  suppose  Parker  has 
it,"  he  said. 

Jim,  too,  had  caught  some  of  this  and  turned  to  Lady 
Osborne. 

"By  Jove!  that's  so  like  Claude,"  he  said. 

Lady  Osborne  beamed  delightedly  upon  him. 

"Well,  and  it  is,"  she  said.  "There  never  was  a  boy 
so  free  with  his  things.  Lor' !  he  used  to  get  into  such 
hot  water  with  his  father  when  first  he  went  to  Oxford. 
There  was  no  question,  as  you  may  guess,  of  his  being 
kept  short  of  money,  but  naturally  his  father  wanted 
to  hear  where  it  went,  and  there's  no  denying  he  was 


238  THEOSBORNES 

a  bit  extravagant  when  he  first  went  up,  as  they  say. 
But  when  Claude  got  his  cheque-book,  to  look  where  and 
how  it  had  all  gone,  why,  there  wasn't  as  much  as  a 
date  or  anything  on  one  of  the  bits  you  leave  in.  I  never 
can  remember  the  name." 

"Counterfoils?"  suggested  Jim. 

"Yes,  to  be  sure.  And  I'll  be  bound  he  doesn't 
enter  half  of  them  now.  And  his  uncle  here  played 
him  a  trick  the  other  day  —  didn't  pay  in  his  quarter's 
allowance,  did  you,  Alf?  And  Claude  never  knew  till 
he  was  told;  just  said  he  was  hard  up  and  didn't  know 
why,  bless  him.  Well,  he  being  his  father's  son,  it 
would  be  queer  if  he  was  tight-handed." 

Jim  laughed. 

"I  shall  be  down  on  Mr.  —  Lord  Osborne  like  a 
knife,"  he  said,  "if  he  doesn't  pay  me  his  rent." 

"I'll  be  bound  you  will,  and  quite  right  too,  for  money 
is  money  when  all's  said  and  done,"  said  Lady  Osborne 
cordially.  "Well,  I'm  sure  that  sea  trout  is  very  good. 
I  feel  as  I  can  take  a  mouthful  more,  Thoresby;  and 
give  Lord  Austell  some  more.  I'm  sure  I  can  tempt 
you,  Lord  Austell." 

"Nothing  easier,"  said  Jim. 

Uncle  Alf  came  and  sat  next  Dora  in  the  drawing 
room  when,  after  a  rather  prolonged  discussion  of  the 
'40  port,  the  gentlemen  joined  the  rest  of  the  circle 
again. 

"I  came  up  here  from  Richmond,  making  no  end  of 
smart  speeches  in  the  carriage,  my  dear,"  he  said,  "in 
order  to  make  Maria  and  Eddie  jump,  but  I've  not  said 
one.  She's  a  good  old  sort,  is  Maria,  and  she  was  enjoy- 


THE    OSBORNES  239 

ing  herself  so.    My  dear,  what's  that  great  big  gold  thing 
they've  put  up  above  the  front  door?" 

"Oh!  a  coronet,  I  think,"  said  Dora. 

"I  thought  it  was,  but  I  couldn't  be  sure.  Lord, 
what  a  set  out!  But  those  two  are  having  such  a  good 
time.  I  hadn't  the  heart  to  make  them  sit  up.  And 
I  daresay  they've  got  a  lot  of  men  in  the  House  of  Lords 
not  half  so  honest  as  Eddie." 

"I  should  never  have  forgiven  you,  Uncle  Alf,"  said 
she,  "if  you'd  vexed  them." 

" Well,  it's  a  good  thing  I  didn't,  then,"  said  he.  "And 
what's  going  to  happen  now?  You  don't  mean  to  say 
Mrs.  Per's  going  to  sing?" 

It  appeared  that  this  was  the  case.  Naturally  she 
required  a  certain  amount  of  pressing,  not  because  she 
had  any  intention  of  not  singing  but  because  a  little 
diffidence,  a  little  fear  that  she  had  been  naughty,  and 
hadn't  sung  for  weeks,  was  the  correct  thing. 

Uncle  Alfred  heard  this  latter  remark. 

"She's  been  practising  every  day.  Per  told  us  in 
the  dining  room,"  he  said.  "Lord,  if  Sabincourt  would 
paint  her  as  she  looks  when  she  sings  I'd  give  him  his 
price  for  it.  That  woman  will  give  me  the  indigestion 
if  I  let  my  mind  dwell  on  her." 

Mrs.  Per  sang  with  a  great  deal  of  expression  such 
simple  songs  as  did  not  want  much  else.  Indeed,  her 
rendering  of  "Be  good,  sweet  maid,  and  let  who  will 
be  cle-he-ver,"  was  chiefly  expression.  There  was  a 
great  deal  of  expression,  too,  in  the  concluding  line, 
which  she  sang  with  her  eyes  on  the  ceiling  and  a  rapt 
smile  playing  about  her  tight  little  mouth.  "One  lorng 


240  THEOSBORNES 

sweet  sorng,"  she  sang  on  a  quavering  and  throaty  F: 
"One  lorng  sweet  sorng."  And  she  touched  the  last 
chord  with  the  soft  pedal  down  and  continued  smiling 
for  several  seconds,  with  that  "lost  look,"  as  Per  des- 
cribed it,  "that  Lizzie  gets  when  she  is  singing." 

Her  mother-in  law  broke  the  silence. 

"If  that  isn't  nice!"  she  said.  "And  I  declare  if 
I  know  whether  I  like  the  words  or  the  music  best.  One 
seems  to  fit  the  other  so.  Lizzie,  my  dear,  you're  going 
to  give  us  another,  won't  you  now?" 

Lizzie  had  every  intention  of  doing  so,  but  again  a  little 
pressing  was  necessary,  and  she  finally  promised  to  sing 
once  more,  just  once,  if  Claude  would  "do"  something 
afterward.  So  she  ran  her  hands  over  the  keys,  and 
became  light  and  frolicsome,  and  sang  something  about 
a  shower  and  a  maid  and  a  little  kissing,  which  was 
very  pretty  and  winsome.  After  that  she  sang  again 
and  again. 

Jim  had  seated  himself  opposite  Dora,  and  in  the 
middle  of  this  their  eyes  met  for  a  moment.  A  faint 
smile  quivered  on  the  corner  of  Jim's  mouth,  but  the 
moment  after  Mrs.  Per  came  to  the  end  of  a  song  and 
he  warmly  complimented  her.  Eventually  she  left 
the  piano  and  called  upon  Claude  for  the  fulfilment  of 
his  promise. 

Claude  on  occasion  recited;  he  did  so  now.  The 
piece  he  chose  was  a  favourite  of  his  father's,  a  little 
hackneyed,  perhaps,  for  it  was  "The  Sands  of  Dee," 
and  Lord  Osborne  blew  his  nose  when  it  was  finished. 

"Thank  ye,  my  boy,"  he  said.  "You  said  that  beau- 
tiful. Just  to  think  of  it,  poor  thing,  her  caught  by  the 


THEOSBORNES  241 

tide  like  that,  and  her  hair  getting  into  the  salmon  nets. 
I'm  glad  we  didn't  have  that  before  dinner.  I  couldn't 
have  eaten  a  morsel  of  that  salmon." 

"My  dear,  you're  so  fanciful,"  said  his  wife,  "and  it 
was  sea  trout.  But  Claude  said  it  beautiful.  I'm  sure 
I've  heard  them  at  the  music  halls,  often  and  often,  not 
half  so  good  as  that,  for  all  that  they  are  professionals." 

"So  that  if  your  uncle  cuts  you  off  with  a  shilling, 
Claude,"  said  his  father,  "you  can  still  make  a  home  for 
Dora;  hey,  Dora?" 

And  then  Per  did  several  very  remarkable  conjuring 
tricks,  which  nobody  could  guess.  You  put  a  watch 
into  a  handkerchief  and  held  it  quite  tight,  and  then  there 
wasn't  any,  or  else  it  was  a  rabbit,  or  something  quite 
different.  Again,  whatever  card  you  chose,  and  wher- 
ever you  put  it  back  into  the  pack,  Per  was  on  it  in  no 
time.  Or  you  thought  of  something,  and  Per  blind- 
fold, with  the  help  of  Mrs.  Per,  told  you  what  you 
had  thought  of.  And  the  Zanzics  were  held  not  to 
be  in  it. 

After  the  strain  and  bewilderment  of  these  accom- 
plishments it  was  almost  a  relief  to  sit  down  to  a  good 
round  game,  the  basis  of  which  was  a  pack  of  cards, 
some  counters,  a  system  of  forfeits,  and  plenty  of  chaff. 

And  about  twelve,  after  a  little  light  supper,  the  party 
broke  up,  Alf  driving  down  to  Richmond,  and  Lady 
Austell,  who  had  made  up  her  little  disagreement  with  Jim, 
dropping  him  at  his  rooms.  It  was  but  a  step  from 
Park  Lane  there,  but  they  held  a  short  and  pointed 
conversation  on  their  way. 

"A  delightful,  charming  evening,"  she  said;  "all  so 


242  THEOSBORNES 

genuine  and  honest,  with  no  forced  gaiety  or  insincere 
welcome.  How  happy  and  content  Dora  ought  to  be." 

"The  question  being  whether  she  is,"  remarked  Jim. 

"My  dear,  have  you  noticed  anything?"  asked  his 
mother  rather  quickly.  "Certainly  during  that  reci- 
tation she  looked  a  little  —  a  little  inscrutable.  What 
a  deplorable  performance,  was  it  not?  And  if  that 
odious  woman  had  sung  any  more  I  think  I  should 
have  screamed.  But  Dora  and  Claude?  Do  you  think 
the  dear  fellow  is  a  little  on  her  nerves?" 

"Yes,  I  think  the  dear  fellow  is  a  little  on  her  nerves," 
said  Jim,  with  marked  evenness  of  tone.  "Can  you 
not  imagine  the  possibility  of  that?  Consider." 

It  was  very  likely  that  Lady  Austell  considered.  She 
did  not,  however,  think  good  to  inform  Jim  of  the  result 
of  this  consideration. 

"And  he?"  she  asked. 

"I  am  not  in  his  confidence,"  said  Jim.  "I  am  only 
in  his  flat.  And  here  it  is.  Thanks  so  much,  dear 
mother,  for  the  lift.  Won't  you  come  in?  No?" 

"I  must  speak  to  Dora,"  said  she,  as  the  brougham 
stopped. 

"I  think  that  would  be  very  unwise  of  you.  She 
knows  all  you  would  say,  about  his  honour,  his  kind- 
ness, and  so  on.  But  at  the  present  moment  I  think 
she  feels  that  all  the  cardinal  virtues  do  not  make  up 
for  —  well,  for  things  like  that  recitation." 

Lady  Austell  thought  over  this  for  a  moment  as  Jim 
got  out. 

"You  are  friends  with  Claude?"  she  asked.  "Real 
friends,  I  mean  ?  " 


THEOSBORNES  243 

"No,  I  can't  stand  him,  and  I  think  he  can't  stand  me." 

Lady  Austell  could  not  resist  giving  her  son  a 
little  dab. 

"And  yet  you  use  his  flat?"  she  said. 

"Oh,  yes,  and  drink  his  wine  and  smoke  his  cigars. 
You  would  rather  have  liked  the  flat,  wouldn't  you? 
Perhaps  he'll  lend  it  you  another  time.  He  likes  doing 
kind  things  that  don't  incommode  him.  I  think  he  likes 
feeling  it  doesn't  matter  to  him,  and  I  feel  that  the  fact 
that  we  dislike  each  other  gives  a  certain  piquancy  to 
them.  Good  night;  I'm  so  glad  you  liked  your  party. 
It  is  refreshing  after  the  glitter  and  hollowness  of  the 
world  to  get  close  to  family  affection  again." 

It  seemed  to  her  that  a  little  flame  of  true  bitterness, 
quite  unlike  his  usually  genial  cynicism  and  insouciance^ 
shone  in  these  words. 

"Good  night,  dear,"  she  said  very  softly;  "I  hope 
nothing  has  disagreed  with  you." 

Jim  laughed  a  little  to  himself  as  he  ascended  the 
thickly  carpeted  stairs  to  the  flat  on  the  first  floor,  but 
the  laugh  was  not  of  long  duration  or  of  very  genuine 
quality.  He  felt  at  enmity  with  all  the  world  in  spite 
of  the  excellent  dinner  he  had  eaten.  He  felt  that  Dora 
was  a  fool  to  let  little  things  like  —  well,  like  that  recita- 
tion —  come  between  her  and  the  immense  enjoyment 
that  could  be  got  out  of  life  if  only  you  had,  as  was  the 
case  with  her,  a  limitless  power  of  commanding  its 
pleasures.  And  yet,  if  those  pleasures  were  to  be  indis- 
solubly  wrapped  up  with  an  Osborne  environment  he 
felt  he  almost  understood  her  absence  of  content.  To 


244  THEOSBORNES 

put  a  case  —  if  he  was  given  the  choice  of  going  to  New- 
market to-morrow  with  Lady  Osborne  in  her  two-thou- 
sand-pound seventy-horse-power  Napier,  or  of  trav- 
elling there  third  class  at  his  own  expense,  what  would 
he  do?  Certainly,  if  the  choice  was  for  one  day  only, 
he  would  go  in  the  car,  but  if  the  choice  concerned  going 
there  every  day  for  the  rest  of  his  life,  or  hers,  the  ques- 
tion hardly  needed  an  answer.  The  thing  would  become 
unbearable.  And  Dora  had  to  go,  not  to  Newmarket 
only,  but  everywhere,  everywhere  with  Claude.  And 
for  himself,  he  would  sooner  have  gone  anywhere  with 
Mrs.  Osborne  than  with  him. 

It  is  more  blessed  to  give  than  to  receive;  in  many 
cases  it  is  certainly  easier  to  give  with  a  good  grace  than 
to  receive  in  the  same  spirit.  And  if  the  gift  is  made 
without  sacrifice  it  is,  unless  the  recipient  is  genuinely 
attached  to  the  giver,  most  difficult  to  receive  it  charit- 
ably. It  may  be  received  with  gratitude  if  it  is  much 
wanted,  but  the  gratitude  here  is  felt  not  toward  the 
giver,  but  toward  the  gift.  Toward  the  giver  there 
is  liable  to  spring  up,  especially  if  he  is  not  liked  before, 
a  feeling  compared  with  which  mere  dislike  is  mild. 
It  was  so  with  Jim  now. 

He  squirted  some  whisky  into  a  glass,  put  a  lump  of 
clinking  ice  into  it,  and  added  some  Perrier  water. 
All  these  things  were  Claude's,  so  was  the  chair  in  which 
he  sat,  so  was  the  cigar,  the  end  of  which  he  had  just 
bitten  off.  This  latter  operation  he  had  not  performed 
with  his  usual  neatness;  there  was  a  piece  of  loose  leaf 
detached,  which  might  spoil  the  even  smoking  of  it,  and 
he  threw  it  away  and  took  another.  They  were  all 


THEOSBORNES  245 

Claude's,  and  if  his  drinks  and  his  cigars  had  been  made 
of  molten  gold,  Jim  felt  he  would  sit  up  till  morning, 
even  at  the  cost  of  personal  inconvenience,  in  order  to 
consume  as  much  as  possible  of  them.  The  evening 
too,  "the  charming,  pleasant  party,"  of  which  his  mother 
had  spoken  so  foolishly,  had  enraged  him.  There  had 
been  all  there  that  money,  the  one  thing  in  the  world 
he  desired  so  much,  could  possibly  buy,  and  they  had 
found  nothing  better  to  do  than  listen  to  ridiculous 
songs,  hear  an  unspeakable  recitation,  and  play  an 
absurd  round  game.  He  hated  them  all,  not  only  because 
they  were  rich,  but  because  they  were  ill-bred  and  con- 
tented. Jovial  happiness  (the  more  to  be  resented  because 
of  its  joviality),  a  happiness,  he  knew  well,  that  was 
really  independent  of  money,  trickled  and  oozed  from 
them  like  resin  from  a  healthy  fir  tree;  happiness  was 
their  sap,  their  life;  they  were  sticky  with  it.  And  he 
was  afraid  he  knew  where  that  came  from;  it  came  not 
only  from  their  good  digestion,  but  from  their  kindness, 
their  simplicity,  their  nice  natures.  But  if  he  at  this 
moment  had  the  opportunity  of  changing  his  own  nature 
with  that  of  any  of  these  Osbornes,  to  take  their  kind- 
ness, their  joviality,  their  simple  contentment  with  and 
pleasure  in  life,  with  all  their  wealth  thrown  in,  he  would 
have  preferred  himself  with  all  his  disabilities  and  poverty. 
There  was  something  about  them  all,  some  inherent 
commonness,  that  he  would  not  have  made  part  of  him- 
self at  any  price.  Only  a  day  or  two  ago  he  had  been 
telling  Dora  to  put  the  purseholders  in  a  good  temper 
at  whatever  cost,  not  to  mind  about  their  being  not 
quite  —  and  now  he  saw  her  difficulty.  It  was  not 


246  THEOSBORNES 

possible  even  to  think  of  them  in  a  humorous  light ;  they 
were  awful  grotesques,  nightmares,  for  all  their  happi- 
ness and  wealth,  if  you  were  obliged  to  have  much  to 
do  with  them. 

Jim  finished  his  whisky  and  took  more.  Of  all  those 
tragic  and  irritating  figures,  the  one  who  appeared  to 
him  most  deplorable  and  exasperating  was  Claude,  on 
whom  he  was  living  at  this  moment,  and  on  whom  he 
proposed  to  live  till  the  end  of  the  month.  After  that 
he  would  no  doubt  search  out  some  means  of  living  on 
him  further.  Rich  people  were  the  cows  provided  for  the 
poorer.  It  was  quite  unnecessary,  because  you  fat- 
tened on  their  milk,  to  like  them.  You  liked  their  milk, 
not  them.  And  it  was  this  very  thing,  this  fact  of  his 
own  indebtedness  to  his  brother-in  law,  that  made  Claude 
the  more  insupportable.  That  Claude  was  kind  and  gen- 
erous,  that  Dora  had  married  him,  aggravated  his  offence, 
and  the  unspeakable  meanness  of  his  own  relationship 
to  him,  in  being  thus  dependent  on  him,  aggravated 
it  further.  Yet  his  own  meanness  was  part  of  Claude's 
offence;  he  would  not  have  felt  like  this  toward  a  gen- 
tleman. But  Claude,  as  he  had  said  long  ago  to  his 
mother,  was  a  subtle  cad,  the  worst  variety  of  that  dis- 
tressing species.  So  he  lit  another  of  his  cigars. 

The  butt  of  the  one  he  had  just  thrown  away  had  fallen 
inside  the  brass  fender,  and  the  Persian  rug  in  front  of 
the  fender  had  been  pulled  a  little  too  far  inward,  so  that 
its  fringe  projected  inside.  The  smouldering  end  fell 
on  to  this  fringe,  and  Jim  watched  it  singe  the  edge  of 
the  rug  without  getting  up  to  take  it  off,  justifying  him- 
self the  while.  The  interior  of  a  fender  was  a  proper 


THEOSBORNES  247 

receptacle  for  cigar  ends,  and  if  the  edge  of  a  rug  happened 
to  be  there  too  it  was  not  his  fault.  And  the  fact  that 
he  sat  and  watched  it  being  singed  was  wholly  and  com- 
pletely symptomatic  of  his  state  of  mind.  He  liked 
seeing  even  an  infinitesimal  deterioration  of  Claude's 
property.  What  business  had  Claude  with  prints  and 
Persian  rugs  and  half-filled-in  cheque-books?  He  was 
generous  because  the  generosity  cost  him  absolutely 
nothing. 

Had  Jim  been  able  to  hear  the  conversation  that  took 
place  in  the  drawing-room  of  No.  92  after  he  and  his 
mother  had  gone  his  evil  humour  would  probably  have 
been  further  accentuated.  Lord  Osborne  started  it. 

"Well,  give  me  a  family  party  every  night,"  he  said, 
"and  I  ask  for  nothing  more,  my  lady,  though,  to  be  sure, 
I  like  your  grand  parties  second  to  none.  Dora,  my 
dear,  that  brother  of  yours  is  a  sharp  fellow.  He  beat 
us  all  at  our  round  game.  I  hope  he's  comfortable  in 
your  flat,  eh,  Claude  ?  You've  left  some  cigars  and  such- 
like, I  hope,  so  that  he  won't  wish  to  turn  out,  saying 
there's  more  of  comfort  to  be  had  at  his  club." 

Claude  reassured  his  father  on  this  point,  and  Mrs. 
Per  glided  up  to  Dora.  She  usually  glided. 

"What  a  dear  Lord  Austell  is,  Dora,"  she  said.  "And 
so  aristocratic  looking.  I  wish  I  had  a  brother  like  that. 
Do  you  think  that  he  liked  my  little  songs?  Per  and 
I  wondered  if  he  would  come  down  to  Sheffield  in  the 
autumn.  Per  has  some  good  shooting,  I  believe,  though 
I  can't  bear  the  thought  of  it.  Poor  little  birds!  to  be 
shot  like  that  when  they're  so  happy.  I  always  stop  my 
ears  if  they  are  shooting  near  the  house." 


248  THEOSBORNES 

"Lizzie,  my  dear,  you're  too  kind-hearted,"  said 
Lady  Osborne.  "What  would  our  dinners  be  like  if 
it  wasn't  for  the  shooting?  Perpetual  beef  and  mutton, 
nothing  tasty." 

Mrs.  Per  wheeled  around  with  a  twist  of  her  serpentine 
neck. 

"Ah,  but  you  can  never  have  read  that  dear  little  story 
by  Gautier  —  or  is  it  Daudet?  —  about  the  quails," 
she  said.  "I  have  never  touched  a  quail  since  I  read  it. 
But  Lord  Austell,  dear  Dora.  We  were  going  to  have  a 
little  party,  very  select,  about  the  middle  of  September, 
and  Per  and  I  wondered  if  Lord  Austell  would  come. 
There  are  the  races,  you  know,  for  two  days,  and  with 
two  days'  shooting,  and  perhaps  an  expedition  to  Foun- 
tains, I  think  he  might  like  it.  He  told  me  he  was  so 
interested  in  antiquities.  And  if  you  and  Claude  would 
come  too " 

Mrs.  Per  broke  off  in  some  confusion.  She  had  for- 
gotten for  the  moment.  And  she  drew  Dora  a  little  aside. 

"Dear  Dora,"  she  said,  "I  quite  forgot.  Quite,  quite, 
quite!  So  stupid!  But  Claude,  perhaps,  if  all  is  well? 
They  are  great  friends,  are  they  not?  Claude  told  me 
that  Lord  Austell  was  keeping  his  flat  warm  for  him. 
So  kind  and  so  nice  of  Claude  to  lend  it,  too,  of  course." 

Then  Lord  Osborne's  voice  broke  in  again. 

"Yes,  the  family  party  is  the  party  to  my  mind,"  he 
said.  "No  pomp;  just  a  plain  dinner,  and  a  song,  and 
a  conjuring  trick,  and  no  fatigue  for  my  lady,  with  stand- 
ing up  and  saying  'Glad  to  see  you'  a  thousand  times 
—  not  but  what  she  isn't  glad,  as  we  all  are  to  see  our 
friends;  but  Lord,  Mrs.  O.  —  I  beg  your  pardon,  my 


THEOSBORNES  249 

lady  —  how  nice  to  have  a  quiet  evening  such  as  to- 
night, with  my  Lady  Austell  and  her  son  just  dropping 
in  neighbour-like,  and  no  bother  to  anybody.  Per, 
my  boy,  you've  made  a  conquest  of  Lord  Austell;  he  was 
wrapped  up  in  your  tricks,  and  each  puzzled  him  more 
than  the  last.  As  he  said  to  me,  'You  don't  know  what 
to  expect:  it  may  be  an  egg,  or  a  watch,  or  the  ten  of 
spades.' " 

"Well,  I  expect  it  would  take  a  professional  to  see 
through  my  tricks,"  said  Per;  "and  even  then  I'd  war- 
rant I'd  puzzle  him  as  often  as  not.  There's  a  lot  of 
practice  goes  to  each,  and  there's  many  evenings,  when 
Lizzie  and  I  have  been  alone,  when  we've  gone  through 
them,  and  she  pulled  me  up  short  if  ever  she  saw,  so  I 
might  say,  the  wink  of  a  shirt  cuff.  But  they  went  off 
pretty  well  to-night,  though  I  say  that  who  shouldn't." 

"And  I'm  sure  I  don't  know  what  pleased  me  best 
to-night,"  said  Lady  Osborne,  "whether  it  was  the  con- 
juring tricks,  or  Lizzie's  singing,  or  the  'Sands  of  Dee,' 
or  the  round  game.  Bless  me !  and  it's  nearly  one  o'clock. 
It's  time  we  were  all  in  bed,  for  there's  no  rest  for  any- 
body to-morrow,  I'm  sure,  not  after  the  clock's  gone 
ten  in  the  morning  till  two  the  next  morning  and  later." 

Lord  Osborne  gave  a  gigantic  yawn. 

"I'm  sure  I  apologize  to  the  company  for  gaping," 
he  said,  "but  it  comes  upon  one  sometimes  without 
knowing.  And  what  has  my  lady  planned  for  to-morrow  ?" 

"As  if  it  was  me  as  had  planned  it,"  said  his  wife, 
"when  you  would  have  half  the  Cabinet  take  their  lunch 
with  you,  and  a  Mercy  League  of  some  kind  in  the  ball- 
room in  the  afternoon!  Three  hundred  teas  ordered, 


250  THEOSBORNES 

and  by  your  orders,  Mr.  O.,  which  will  but  give  you  time 
to  dress,  if  you're  thinking  to  make  a  speech  to  them. 
But  do  be  up  to  the  time  for  dinner,  for  we  sit  down 
thirty  at  table  at  a  quarter  past  eight,  and  out  of  the 
ballroom  you  must  go,  for  if  the  servants  clear  it  and  air 
it  for  my  dance  by  eleven  o'clock,  it's  as  much  as  you 
can  expect  of  flesh  and  blood!" 

"And  she  carries  it  all  in  her  head,"  said  her  husband, 
"as  if  it  was  twice  five's  ten!  Maria,  my  dear,  you're 
right,  and  it's  time  to  go  to  the  land  of  Nod.  Not  that 
there'll  be  much  nodding  for  me;  I  shall  sleep  without 
them  sort  of  preliminaries." 

"Well,  and  I'm  sure  you  ought  to  after  all  the  snor- 
ing exercise  you  went  through  last  night,"  said  Lady 
Osborne  genially.  "I  couldn't  have  believed  it  if  I 
hadn't  heard  it.  There,  there,  my  dear,  it's  only  my  joke. 
And  they  tell  me  it  shows  a  healthy  pair  of  lungs  to 
make  all  that  night  music,  as  I  may  say.  And,  Dora, 
be  sure  as  your  brother  knows  he's  welcome  to  dinner 
as  well  as  the  dance  afterward,  in  case  I  didn't  say  it 
to  him.  I  can  always  find  an  extra  place  at  my  table 
for  them  as  are  always  welcome." 

Lord  Osborne  got  up. 

"Not  but  what  you  didn't  fair  stick  him  over  your 
conjuring  tricks,  Per,"  he  said.  "And  did  you  cast 
your  eye  over  the  coronet  I've  had  put  up  above  the 
front  door?  It's  a  fine  bit  of  carving.  Well,  good 
night  to  all  and  sundry.  Claude,  my  boy,  you  take 
good  care  of  Per,  and  mind  to  put  out  the  lights  when 
you  come  to  bed.  One  o'clock!  I  should  never  have 
guessed  it  was  past  twelve." 


THEOSBORNES  251 

The  Newmarket  meeting  began  next  day,  and  Jim 
was  not  put  to  the  odious  degradation  of  paying  for  his 
own  ticket,  as  he  motored  down  with  a  friend.  No  more 
delightful  way  of  spending  the  morning  could  be  desired 
than  this  swift  progress  through  the  summer  air  over 
these  smooth  roads;  and  that,  with  a  confident  belief  in 
the  soundness  of  his  betting  book  and  the  anticipation 
of  a  pleasant  and  lucrative  afternoon,  entirely  dissi- 
pated the  evil  humour  of  the  evening  before.  After  all, 
in  this  imperfect  world,  it  was  wiser  to  take  the  bad 
with  the  good,  and  if  the  manners  and  customs  of  the 
Osborne  family  got  on  his  nerves,  it  must  be  put 
down  to  their  credit,  not  to  the  aggravation  of  their 
offences,  as  he  had  been  disposed  to  think  last  night, 
that  they  treated  him  in  so  open-handed  a  way.  Cer- 
tainly they  would  appear  in  a  far  more  disagreeable 
light  If  they  were  close-handed  with  their  money.  It 
was,  of  course,  a  sin  and  an  iniquity  that  other  people 
should  have  money  and  not  he;  but  since  Providence 
(and  that  deplorable  Derby  week)  had  chosen  to  make 
this  disposition  of  affairs,  it  was  as  well  that  certain 
mines  of  bullion  should  be  accessible  to  him.  And  here 
already  was  the  Heath,  and  the  crowds,  and  the  roar  of 
the  ring. 

Like  most  gamblers,  Jim,  though  practical  enough 
in  the  ordinary  affairs  of  life,  had  a  vein  of  fantastic 
superstition  about  him,  and  it  occurred  to  him  after  the 
first  race,  in  which  he  had  the  good  fortune  to  back  the 
winner,  that  his  luck  had  turned,  and  he  cast  about  to 
think  of  the  cause  that  had  turned  it.  At  once  he  hit 
on  it:  he  had  paid  Claude  back  the  sovereign  which  he 


252  THEOSBORNES 

had  found  on  his  dressing  table  and  had  given  to  the 
cook.  That  had  been  a  happy  inspiration  of  his:  the 
action  itself  had  been  of  the  nature  of  casting  bread 
on  the  waters,  for  Claude  probably  was  unconscious 
of  having  left  a  sovereign  there,  and  in  any  case  would 
not  ask  for  it;  and  here,  not  after  many  days,  but  the 
very  next  day,  he  had  picked  up  fifty  of  them  before 
lunch.  Apparently  some  sort  of  broad-minded  guar- 
dian angel  looked  after  his  bets  and  his  morals,  and,  if 
he  was  good,  turned  the  luck  for  him  (for  this  broad- 
minded  angel  clearly  did  not  object  to  a  little  horse 
racing)  and  enabled  him  to  back  winners.  And  after 
this  initial  success  Jim  went  back  to  his  friend's  motor 
and  ate  an  extremely  good  lunch. 

Whether  the  broad-minded  angel  looked  back  over 
Jim's  past  record  and  found  something  that  he  could  not 
quite  stand,  Jim  never  reasoned  out  with  any  certainty; 
all  that  was  certain  was  that  after  that  first  race  the 
carefully  made  up,  almost  gilt-edged  book  went  to  pieces. 
Once  in  a  sudden  access  of  caution  he  hedged  over  a 
horse  he  had  backed;  that  was  the  only  winner  he  was 
concerned  with  for  the  rest  of  the  day. 

Jim  returned  to  town  that  evening  in  a  frame  of  mind 
that  was  not  yet  desperate,  but  sufficiently  serious  to  make 
him  uncomfortable.  Outwardly,  he  took  his  losses 
admirably,  was  cheerfully  cynical  about  them,  and 
behaved  in  nowise  other  than  he  would  have  behaved  if 
he  had  been  winning  all  afternoon.  He  had  promised 
to  dine  at  the  Savoy,  but  on  arrival  at  the  flat  he  found 
a  telephone  message  written  out  which  had  come  from 
Dora  after  his  departure  that  morning,  asking  him  to 


THEOSBORNES  253 

dine  at  No.  92.  At  that  his  mood  of  last  evening  flashed 
up  again. 

"I'll  be  damned  if  I  ever  set  foot  in  that  house  again!" 
he  said  to  himself.  And  regretted  into  the  telephone. 

There  was  a  telegram  for  him  as  well.  It  was  from  a 
very  well-informed  quarter,  giving  him  the  tip  to  back 
Callisto,  an  outsider,  for  the  big  race  to-morrow. 

He  crumpled  it  up  impatiently;  how  many  well- 
informed  tips,  he  wondered,  had  he  acted  on,  and  what 
percentage  of  them  had  come  off?  Scarcely  one  in  a  hun- 
dred. No;  backing  outsiders  was  a  good  enough  game 
if  you  were  on  your  luck,  and  also  happened  to  be  solvent. 

He  did  not  go  to  Newmarket  next  day,  but  sat  all  after- 
noon in  his  club,  making  frequent  journeys  to  the  tape, 
that  ticked  out  inexorably  and  without  emotion  things 
so  momentous  to  him.  It  was  a  little  out  of  order,  and 
now  and  then,  after  the  announcement  "Newmarket," 
it  would  reel  off  a  rapid  gabble  of  meaningless  letters 
like  a  voluble  drunkard,  or  give  some  extraneous  infor- 
mation about  what  was  happening  at  Lord's.  Then  it 
pulled  itself  together  again,  and  he  saw  that  Callisto 
had  won.  Harry  Franklin  was  looking  over  his  shoul- 
der as  this  information  came  out,  and  gave  a  cackle  of 
laughter. 

"Hurrah!  fur  coat  for  May  and  new  gun  for  me,"  he 
said. 

"Lucky  dog!"  said  Jim.  "I  thought  you  never 
betted." 

"Oh,  once  in  a  blue  moon!  Moon  was  blue  yester- 
day. Somebody  gave  me  this  tip  last  night,  and  I  had 
ashy." 


254  THEOSBORNES 

"I  didn't  shy,"  said  Jim.  "Rather  a  pity.  Twenty- 
five  to  one,  wasn't  it?" 

"Yes;  that  fiver  of  mine  will  go  a  long  way,"  said 
Harry.  "Come  and  dine  to-night.  Dora  and  Claude 
Osborne  are  coming." 

"Thanks  awfully,  but  I'm  engaged,"  said  Jim. 

He  went  back  to  his  flat  when  the  last  race  was  recorded 
to  see  just  where  he  stood.  He  had  nothing  more  on  for 
the  last  day  of  the  meeting,  and  thus  his  accounts  were 
ready  to  be  made  up.  A  rather  lengthy  addition,  with 
a  very  short  subtraction  of  winnings,  showed  him 
just  what  he  had  lost.  And  he  owed  nearly  five  hun- 
dred pounds  more  than  he  could  possibly  pay.  The 
exact  sum  was  ^476.  It  would  have  to  be  paid  by 
Monday  next. 

It  was  true  in  a  sense,  that,  as  he  told  Harry  Franklin, 
he  was  engaged  that  night,  though  the  engagement  was 
to  himself  only.  It  was  necessary  to  sit  and  think.  The 
money  was  necessary  to  him,  and  necessity  is  a  lawless 
force.  The  money  had  to  be  obtained;  so  much  might 
be  taken  for  granted.  It  was  no  use  considering  what 
would  happen  if  it  was  not  obtained;  therefore,  all  that 
might  be  dismissed,  for  it  had  to  be  obtained.  That 
was  the  terminus  from  which  he  started. 

He  had  telephoned  from  the  club  that  he  would  be  in 
for  dinner,  and  would  dine  alone,  and  Claude's  admir- 
able cook,  it  appeared,  understood  the  science  of  pro- 
viding single  dinners  as  well  as  she  understood  more 
festive  provisions.  Dinner  was  light  and  short,  and 
Parker,  without  prompting,  gave  him  a  half-bottle  of 
Veuve  Clicquot,  iced  to  the  right  point  and  no  further, 


THEOSBORNES  255 

and  a  glass  of  port  that  seemed  to  restore  him  to  his  nor- 
mal level.  What  he  had  to  face  was  no  longer  unfaceable ; 
he  felt  he  could  go  out  and  meet  necessity. 

Other  possibilities  detained  him  but  little;  it  was  no 
use  applying  to  his  mother  for  money,  for  he  might  as 
well  apply  to  the  workhouse;  and  he  could  not  apply  to 
the  Osbornes.  He  tried  to  think  of  himself  asking 
Claude  to  lend  him  this  sum;  he  tried  to  picture  himself 
going  to  Lord  Osborne  with  his  story.  But  the  picture 
was  unpaintable :  it  had  no  possible  existence. 

And  the  other  way  —  the  way  which  already  had 
taken  form  and  feature  in  his  mind  —  was  not  so  diffi- 
cult, far  less  impossible  of  contemplation,  simply  because 
his  nature  was  not  straight,  and  the  moral  difficulty  of 
stealing  appeared  to  him  to  be  within  his  power  to  deal 
with.  He  had  never  been  straight;  but  even  now  he 
made  excuses  for  himself,  said  that  it  was  a  necessity 
that  forced  him  into  a  path  that  was  abhorrent  to  him. 
Perhaps  he  did  dislike  it  a  little;  certainly  he  did  not 
take  it  for  amusement.  Simply  there  was  no  other  way 
open  to  him.  There  remained  only  to  consider  the 
chances  of  detection.  They  did  not  seem  to  him  great. 
The  cheque-book  with  which  he  would  shortly  be  con- 
cerned had  clearly  been  left  in  its  drawer  as  finished 
with,  for  the  last  cheque  was  used,  though  not  the  one 
immediately  preceding  it.  Claude,  too,  had  almost 
bragged  about  his  carelessness  with  regard  to  money, 
and  the  truth  of  his  boast  had  been  endorsed  by  his 
mother  only  two  nights  ago,  when  she  told  him  how  he 
had  never  noticed  that  his  quarter's  allowance  had  not 
been  paid  in.  That  was  a  matter  of  nearly  four  thousand 


256  THEOSBORNES 

pounds;  this  of  hardly  more  than  the  same  number  of 
hundreds. 

Besides,  it  if  were  detected,  what  would  Claude  do? 
Proceed  against  his  wife's  brother?  He  believed  he 
need  not  waste  time  in  considering  such  a  possibility, 
for,  to  begin  with,  the  possibility  itself  was  so  remote. 

Then  for  a  moment  some  little  voice  of  honour  made 
itself  heard,  and  he  had  to  argue  it  down.  Not  to  pay 
such  debts  —  debts  of  honour,  as  they  were  called  — 
was  among  those  very  few  things  that  a  man  must  not 
do,  and  for  which,  if  he  does  them,  he  gets  no  quarter 
from  society  in  general.  No  doubt  he  could  get  his 
debts  paid  if  he  went  to  the  Osbornes;  but  that  he  could 
not  do.  It  was  much  harder  for  him  than  that  which 
he  proposed  to  do.  So  the  little  voice  was  silenced 
again,  almost  before  it  began  to  speak.  But  it  was  used 
to  being  taken  lightly,  to  be  not  listened  to. 

He  was  not  often  at  home  in  the  evening,  but  when 
he  was  he  usually  sat  in  Claude's  room,  which,  though 
small,  was  cooler  than  the  southward-facing  drawing 
room,  and  he  took  his  cigar  there  now.  A  tray  of  whisky 
and  Perrier  had  already  been  placed  there,  but  since  he 
did  not  wish  to  be  disturbed  he  rang  the  bell  to  tell  Parker 
he  wished  to  be  called  at  eight  next  morning,  and  wanted 
nothing  more  that  night.  And  then  he  took  some  writ- 
ing paper  from  a  drawer  in  the  knee-hole  table,  and 
drew  up  his  chair  to  it.  He  had  found  there  also  a 
carefully  written  out  speech  by  Claude,  designed  for  his 
constituents.  He  read  a  page  or  two,  and  found  it  dealt 
with  local  taxation.  Large  sums  like  "five  million" 
were  written  in  figures.  Smaller  sums,  as  in  phrases 


THEOSBORNES  257 

"fivepence  in  the  pound,"  were  written  out  in  full. 
This  was  convenient.  There  was  also  a  frequent  occur- 
rence of  "myself"  in  the  speech.  Part  of  that  word  con- 
cerned Jim.  And  Claude  wrote  with  a  stylograph: 
there  were  several  of  them  in  the  pen  tray.  Jim  had 
used  them  regularly  since  he  came  into  the  flat. 

Dora  was  to  call  for  him  next  morning  at  twelve, 
with  the  design  of  spending  the  afternoon  at  Lord's  to 
see  the  cricket,  and,  arriving  there  a  little  before  her 
appointed  time,  was  told  that  he  was  out,  but  had  left 
word  that  he  would  be  back  by  twelve.  Accordingly, 
since  the  heat  was  great  in  the  street,  she  came  up  to 
the  flat  and  waited  for  him  there. 

She  felt  rather  fagged  this  morning,  for  the  last  week 
had  been  strenuous,  while  privately  her  emotional  calen- 
dar had  made  many  entries  against  the  days.  That 
estrangement  from  Claude,  that  alienation  without  a 
quarrel,  and  therefore  the  more  difficult  to  terminate, 
had  in  some  secret  way  got  very  much  worse;  his  pre- 
sence even  had  begun  to  irritate  her;  and  he  certainly 
saw  that  irritation  (it  did  not  require  much  perspicacity), 
and  spared  her  as  much  as  he  could,  never,  if  possible, 
being  alone  with  her.  Instead  he  threw  himself  into  the 
hospitalities  of  the  house;  looked  after  Mrs.  Per,  taking 
her  to  picture-galleries  and  concerts,  until  Per  had 
declared  that  he  was  getting  to  feel  quite  an  Othello, 
and  performed  with  zeal  all  the  duties  of  a  resident  son 
of  the  house.  And  bitterly  Dora  saw  how  easy  it  was 
to  him,  how  without  any  effort  he  caught  the  rdle.  Like 
some  mysterious  stain,  appearing  again  after  years,  the 


258  THEOSBORNES 

resemblance  between  him  and  his  family  daily  manifes- 
ted itself  more  clearly. 

The  sight  of  the  flat  caused  these  thoughts  to  inflict 
themselves  very  vividly  on  her  mind,  and,  sitting  here 
alone,  waiting,  it  was  almost  with  shuddering  that  she 
expected  Claude  to  enter.  How  often  in  these  familiar 
surroundings  she  had  sat  just  here,  expecting  and  long- 
ing for  him  to  come,  to  know  that  he  and  she  would  be 
alone  together  in  their  nest.  And  now  the  walls  seemed 
to  observe  her  with  alien  eyes,  even  as  with  alien  eyes 
she  looked  at  them.  It  was  a  blessing,  anyhow,  that  they 
had  gone  to  Park  Lane :  the  dual  solitude  here  would  have 
been  intolerable. 

She  had  not  got  to  wait  long,  for  Jim's  step  soon 
sounded  in  the  passage.  She  heard  him  whistling  to 
himself  as  he  went  into  his  bedroom,  and  next  moment 
he  came  in. 

"I'm  not  late,"  he  said,  "so  don't  scold  me.  It's 
you  who  are  early,  which  is  the  most  outrageous  form 
of  unpunctuality.  Well,  Dora,  how  goes  it?" 

She  got  up  and  came  across  the  room  to  him. 

"It  doesn't  go  very  nicely,"  she  said;  "but  you  seem 
cheerful,  which  is  to  the  good.  Jim,  it  is  so  nice  to  see 
somebody  cheerful  without  being  jocose.  We  are  all 
very  jocose  at  Park  Lane,  and  Claude  flirts  with  Mrs. 
Per." 

Dora  gave  a  little  laugh. 

"I  didn't  mean  to  speak  of  it,"  she  said,  "and  I  won't 
again.  Let's  have  a  day  off,  and  not  regret  or  wonder 
or  wish.  What  lots  of  times  you  and  I  have  gone  up  to 
Lord's  together,  though  we  usually  went  by  Under- 


THEOSBORNES  259 

ground.  Now  we  go  in  a  great,  noble  motor.  Let's  have 
fun  for  one  day;  I  haven't  had  fun  for  ages." 

Jim  nodded  at  her. 

"That  just  suits  me,"  he  said.  "I  want  a  day  off, 
and  we'll  have  it.  Pretend  you're  about  eighteen  again 
and  me  twenty-one.  After  all,  it's  only  putting  the  clock 
back  a  couple  of  years." 

"And  I  feel  a  hundred,"  said  Dora  pathetically. 

"Well,  don't.  I  felt  a  hundred  yesterday,  and  it  was 
a  mistake." 

"Jim,  I  was  so  sorry  about  your  bad  luck  at  New- 
market. Somebody  told  me  you  had  done  nothing  but 
lose.  What  an  ass  you  are,  dear!  Why  do  you  go  on?" 

Jim's  face  darkened  but  for  a  moment. 

"It's  nothing  the  least  serious,"  he  said.  "I  did  have 
rather  a  bad  time,  but  I've  pulled  through  and  have  paid 
every  penny.  In  fact,  that  is  what  kept  me  this  morning. 
I  hate  to  give  away  all  those  great,  crisp,  crackling  notes ! 
I  hate  it!  And  then  on  my  way  home  I  determined  not 
to  think  about  it  any  more,  nor  about  anything  unpleasant 
that  had  ever  happened,  and  I  get  here  to  find  you 
had  come  to  the  same  excellent  determination.  Let's 
have  a  truce  for  one  day." 

"Amen!"  said  Dora. 

It  is  astonishing  what  can  be  done  by  acting  in  pairs. 
Dora  would  have  been  perfectly  incapable  alone  of  watch- 
ing cricket  with  attention,  far  less,  as  proved  to  be  pos- 
sible, with  rapture;  and  it  might  also  be  open  to  reason- 
able doubt  as  to  whether  alone  Jim  could  have  found 
any  occupation  that  would  have  deeply  interested  him. 
But  together  they  gave  the  slip  to  their  anxieties  and 


26o  THEOSBORNES 

preoccupations,  and  Jim  did  not  even  want  to  bet  on  the 
result  of  the  match.  All  afternoon  they  sat  there,  and 
waited  till  at  half-past  six  the  stumps  were  drawn.  Then 
Dora  gave  a  great  sigh. 

"Oh  dear!  it's  over,"  she  said,  "and  I  suppose  we've 
got  to  begin  again.  What  a  nice  day  we've  had.  I  — 
I  quite  forgot  everything." 

Jim  came  home  rather  late  that  night,  and  found 
letters  waiting  for  him  in  the  little  room  where  he  had 
sat  the  night  before.  There  was  nothing  of  impor- 
tance, and  nothing  that  needed  an  answer,  and  in  a  few 
minutes  he  moved  toward  the  door  in  order  to  go  to 
bed.  And  then  quite  suddenly,  with  the  pent-up  rush 
of  thought  which  all  day  he  had  dammed  up  in  a  corner 
of  his  brain,  he  realized  what  he  had  done,  and  his  face 
went  suddenly  white,  and  strange  noises  buzzed  in  his 
ears,  and  his  very  soul  was  drowned  in  terror.  But  it 
was  too  late:  his  terror  should  have  been  imagined  by 
him  twenty-four  hours  ago.  Now  it  was  authentic; 
there  was  no  imagination  required,  and  he  was  alone 
with  it. 


CHAPTER  X. 

/CLAUDE,  as  became  the  future  candidate  for  the 
constituency  of  West  Brentwood,  was  sedulous 
and  regular  in  reading  the  House  of  Common  debates, 
and  two  mornings  later  was  sitting  after  breakfast  with 
his  Times  in  front  of  him,  to  which  he  devoted  an  atten- 
tion less  direct  than  was  usual  with  him,  for  he  expected 
every  moment  to  be  told  that  the  visitor  whom  he  was 
waiting  for  would  be  announced,  and  he  could  form  no 
idea  of  what  the  visitor's  business  might  be.  Half  an 
hour  ago  he  had  been  summoned  to  the  telephone  and 
found  that  he  was  speaking  to  one  of  the  partners  in 
Grayson's  bank,  who  asked  if  he  could  see  him  at  once. 
No  clue  as  to  what  so  pressing  a  business  might  be 
was  given  him,  and  Mr.  Humby,  the  partner  who  spoke 
to  him,  only  said  that  he  would  start  immediately.  He 
had  first  telephoned,  it  appeared,  to  Claude's  flat,  and 
his  servant  had  given  him  the  address. 

In  itself  there  was  little  here  that  was  tangibly  dis- 
quieting, for  Claude  stood  outside  the  region  of  money 
troubles,  but  other  things  combined  to  make  him,  usually 
so  serene,  rather  nervous  and  apprehensive.  For  the 
last  day  or  two  he  had  been  vaguely  anxious  about  his 
mother,  who  appeared  to  him  not  to  be  well,  though 
in  answer  to  his  question  she  confessed  to  nothing  more 
than  July  fatigue,  while  his  relations  with  Dora,  or 

261 


THEOSBORNES 

rather  his  want  of  them,  continued  to  perplex  or  dis- 
tress him.  She  was  evenly  polite  to  him,  she  went 
out  with  him  when  occasion  demanded,  but  that  some 
barrier  had  been  built  between  them  he  could  no  longer 
doubt.  He  had  not  only  his  own  feeling  to  go  upon, 
for  his  mother  had  remarked  it,  and  asked  if  there 
was  any  trouble.  Lady  Osborne  was  the  least  imagi- 
native of  women,  he  was  afraid,  and  her  question  had  so 
emphasized  it  to  his  mind  that  he  had  determined, 
should  no  amelioration  take  place,  to  put  a  direct  ques- 
tion to  Dora  about  it.  He  would  gladly  have  avoided 
that,  for  his  instinct  told  him  that  the  trouble  was  of 
a  sort  that  could  scarcely  be  healed  by  mere  investi- 
gation, but  the  present  position  was  rapidly  growing 
intolerable.  All  these  things  made  it  difficult  for  him 
to  concentrate  his  attention  on  the  fiscal  question,  and 
it  was  almost  with  a  sense  of  relief  to  him  that  the  inter- 
ruption he  had  been  waiting  for  came. 

He  shook  hands  with  Mr.  Humby,  who  at  once  stated 
his  business. 

"  I  may  be  troubling  you  on  a  false  alarm,  Mr. 
Osborne,"  he  said,  "but  both  my  partners  and  I  thought 
that  one  of  us  had  better  see  you  at  once  in  order  to  set 
our  minds  at  rest." 

"You  have  only  just  caught  me,"  said  Claude.  "I 
am  going  into  the  country  before  lunch." 

"Then  I  have  saved  myself  a  journey,"  said  Mr. 
Humby  gravely. 

He  produced  an  envelope  and  took  a  cheque  out  of  it. 

"The  cheque  came  through  to-day,"  he  said;  "it 
was  cashed  two  days  ago  at  Shepherd's  Bank,  quite 


THEOSBORNES  263 

regularly.  But  it  is  drawn  by  you  to  'self  over  a  week 
ago.  That  was  a  little  curious,  since  cheques  drawn 
to  self  are  usually  cashed  at  once.  Also,  though  that 
is  no  business  of  ours,  it  is  a  rather  large  sum,  five  hundred 
pounds,  to  take  in  cash.  You  have  banked  with  us  for 
some  years,  Mr.  Osborne,  and  we  find  you  have  never 
drawn  a  large  sum  to  yourself  before.  But  the  com- 
bination of  these  things  seemed  to  warrant  us  in  making 
sure  the  cheque  was  —  ah,  genuine.  The  handwriting 
appears  to  be  yours." 

Claude  looked  at  the  date. 

"June  24,"  he  said.  "I  did  draw  a  large  cheque 
about  that  time  for  a  motor-car." 

"That  has  been  presented;  it  was  drawn  to  Daimler's," 
said  Mr.  Humby. 

Claude  turned  the  cheque  over:  it  was  endorsed  with 
his  name,  but  search  how  he  might  he  could  not 
recollect  anything  about  it.  And  slowly  his  inability  to 
remember  deepened  into  the  belief  that  he  had  drawn  no 
such  cheque. 

"If  you  would  refer  to  your  cheque-book,"  said  Mr. 
Humby,  "we  could  clear  the  matter  up.  I  am  sorry 
for  giving  you  so  much  trouble." 

"The  question  is,  Where  is  my  cheque-book?"  said 
Claude.  "I  came  over  here  a  week  ago,  but  before 
that  I  was  at  my  flat.  But  I  will  look." 

He  went  upstairs,  into  the  sitting  room,  which  was 
his  and  Dora's.  She  was  sitting  there  now,  writing 
notes,  and  looked  up  as  he  came  in. 

"Claude,  can  I  speak  to  you  for  a  minute?"  she  said. 

"Yes,  dear,  but  not  this  moment.    I  have  to  find  my 


264  THEOSBORNES 

cheque-book.    Where  do  you  suppose  it  is?    One  must 
attend  to  business,  you  know." 

"Oh,  quite  so,"  said  she,  and  resumed  her  letter 
again. 

Claude's  heart  sank.  Perhaps  she  wanted  to  speak 
to  him  about  things  that  were  of  infinitely  greater  moment, 
and  he  had  made  a  mess  of  it,  repulsed  her,  by  his  foolish 
speech. 

"Dora,  what  is  it?"  he  asked.     "Is  it " 

She  must  have  known  what  was  in  his  mind,  for  she 
made  an  impatient  gesture  of  dissent. 

"No,  if  you  can  give  me  a  minute  later  on,  it  will  be 
all  right,"  she  said. 

His  search  was  soon  rewarded,  but  proved  to  be 
fruitless,  for  the  cheque-book  was  a  new  one,  and  he 
had  only  used  it  for  the  first  time  three  days  ago.  But 
perhaps  she  would  remember  something. 

"Dora,  did  I  give  you  a  rather  big  cheque  for  house- 
hold bills  or  anything,  while  we  were  in  the  flat?"  he 
asked. 

"Yes,  I  remember  that  you  did,"  she  said.  "And  I 
remember  endorsing  it  as  you  drew  it  to  me.  Why?" 

"Only  that  there  is  a  cheque  that  I  appear  to  have 
drawn  for  five  hundred  pounds,  just  before  I  left  the 
flat,  and  for  some  reason  my  bankers  want  to  be  sure 
that  I  did  draw  it." 

"You  mean  they  think  that  it  may  be  forged?" 

"Yes." 

"But  who  can  have  got  hold  of  your  cheque-book?" 
asked  Dora.  "You  have  found  it,  haven't  you?" 

"Yes,  but  this  is  no  use.     The  cheque   in   question 


THEOSBORNES  265 

was  drawn  before  I  began  this  book.    I  suppose  I  left 
it  at  the  flat." 

Dora  had  continued  writing  her  note  as  she  talked, 
for  it  was  only  a  matter  of  a  few  formal  phrases  of  regret, 
but  at  this  moment,  her  hand  suddenly  played  her  false, 
and  her  pen  sputtered  on  the  paper.  And  though  she 
did  not  know  at  that  second  why  this  happened,  a  moment 
afterward  she  knew. 

Below  his  cheque-book  in  the  drawer  lay  Claude's 
passbook.  It  had  been  very  recently  made  up,  for  his 
allowance  from  Uncle  Alfred,  paid  on  June  28,  ap- 
peared to  his  credit,  and  on  the  debit  side  a  cheque 
to  Dora  of  £150,  cashed  on  the  previous  date.  That, 
no  doubt,  was  the  cheque  for  "books"  of  which  she 
had  spoken. 

She  had  gone  on  writing  again,  and  Claude  apparently 
had  noticed  nothing  of  that  pen-splutter. 

"Yes,  here  are  cheques  I  have  drawn  up  till  the  29th," 
he  said,  "and  none  of  £500.  It  looks  rather  queer.  I'll 
be  back  again  in  five  minutes.  I  must  just  see  Mr. 
Humby,  and  tell  him  I  can't  trace  it." 

Claude  went  rather  slowly  downstairs  again.  The 
matter  was  verging  on  certainty.  He  had  drawn  a 
cheque  for  five  hundred  pounds,  on  June  24,  and  it  had 
not  been  presented  till  two  days  ago.  The  cheque  for 
the  car  was  entered,  and  the  cheque  for  books  to  Dora. 
He  hated  to  think  that  Parker  had  forged  his  name,  but 
if  he  had,  good  servant  though  he  was,  there  was  no 
clemency  possible. 

"May  I  look  at  the  cheque  again?"  he  asked. 

He  examined  it  more  closely. 


266  THEOSBORNES 

"I  can  find  no  trace  of  drawing  any  such  cheque," 
he  said,  "and  I  believe  it  is  a  forgery.  It  is  very  like 
my  handwriting,  but  I  don't  believe  I  wrote  it." 

"That  is  what  we  thought,"  said  Mr.  Humby. 

"Then  what  are  you  going  to  do?"  asked  he. 

"Find  out  who  presented  the  cheque,  and  prosecute. 
I  am  very  sorry:  it  is  an  unpleasant  business,  but  the 
bank  can  take  no  other  course." 

He  folded  up  the  cheque  again,  put  it  in  his  pocket 
and  left  the  room.  But  Claude  did  not  at  once  go  back 
to  Dora.  There  had  started  unbidden  into  his  mind 
the  memory  of  a  morning  at  Grote  before  they  were 
married,  of  a  game  of  croquet,  of  a  sovereign.  Next 
minute  he  too  had  left  the  room,  and  the  minute  after 
he  was  in  the  road,  walking  quickly  to  Mount  Street. 
His  old  cheque-book  no  doubt  was  there,  and  he  would 
be  able  to  find  it.  And  all  the  way  there,  he  tried  des- 
perately to  keep  at  bay  a  suspicion  that  threatened  to 
grip  him  by  the  throat.  And  upstairs  Dora  waited  for 
him:  the  same  doubt  threatened  to  strangle  her. 

Jim  was  out,  but  was  expected  back  every  moment,  and 
Claude  went  into  his  small  room,  and  began  searching 
the  drawers  of  his  writing  table.  There  was  a  sheaf 
of  letters  from  Dora  in  one,  a  copy  of  his  speech  on 
municipal  taxation  in  another,  and  in  the  third  a  heap 
of  old  cards  of  invitation  and  the  butt  end  of  his  cheque- 
book. 

Sun  blinds  were  down  outside  the  windows,  the  room 
was  nearly  dark,  and  he  carried  this  out  into  the  large 
sitting  room  and  sat  down  to  examine  it.  There  was  a 
whole  batch  of  cheques,  most  of  which  he,  gould.  remember 


THEOSBORNES  267 

about,  drawn  on  June  22.  Then  came  a  blank  counter- 
foil and  then  the  last  counterfoil  of  the  book,  bearing  a 
docket  of  identification  as  cheque  to  Dora  for  ,£150. 
That  was  drawn  on  the  27th. 

He  heard  a  step  outside;  the  door  opened  and  Jim 
entered.  He  was  whistling  as  he  came  round  the  corner 
of  the  screen  by  the  door.  Then  he  saw  Claude,  his 
whistling  ceased,  and  his  face  grew  white.  Once  he 
tried  to  speak,  but  could  not. 

Claude  saw  that,  the  blank  face,  the  whitened  lips; 
it  was  as  if  Jim  had  been  brought  face  to  face  with  some 
deadly  spectre,  instead  of  the  commonplace  vision  of  his 
brother-in-law  sitting  in  his  own  room,  looking  through 
the  useless  but  surely  innocuous  trunk  of  an  old  cheque- 
book. And  instantaneously,  automatically,  Claude's  mind 
leaped  to  the  conclusion  which  he  had  tried  to  keep 
away  from  it.  But  it  could  be  kept  away  no  longer :  the 
inference  closed  upon  him  like  the  snap  of  a  steel  spring. 

In  the  same  instant  there  came  upon  him  his  own 
personal  dislike  of  Jim,  and  his  distrust  of  him.  How 
deep  that  was  he  never  knew  till  this  moment.  Then 
came  the  reflection  that  he  was  doing  Jim  a  monstrous 
injustice  in  harbouring  so  horrible  a  suspicion,  and 
that  the  best  way  of  clearing  his  mind  of  it  was  to  let 
the  bank  trace  the  cheque  and  prosecute.  But  he  knew 
that  it  was  his  dislike  of  his  brother-in-law  that  gave 
birth  to  this,  not  a  sense  of  fairness.  And  on  top  of 
it  all  came  the  thought  of  Dora  and  his  love  for  her, 
and  mingled  with  that  a  certain  pity  that  was  its  legitimate 
kinsman. 

The  pause,  psychically  so  momentous,  was  but  short 


268  THEOSBORNES 

in  duration,  and  Claude  jumped  up.  His  mind  was 
already  quite  decided:  it  seemed  to  have  decided  itself! 
without  conscious  interference  on  his  part. 

"Good  morning,  Jim,"  he  said.  "I  must  apologize 
for  making  an  invasion  in  your  absence,  but  I  had  to 
refer  back  to  an  old  cheque-book." 

Jim  commanded  his  voice. 

"Nothing  wrong,  I  hope,"  he  said. 

Again  Claude  had  to  make  a  swift  decision.  He 
could  tell  Jim  that  a  cheque  of  his  had  been  forged,  and 
that  the  matter  was  already  in  the  hands  of  the  bank: 
that  probably  would  force  a  confession,  if  there  was 
cause  for  one.  But  it  would  still  be  his  dislike  (though 
he  might  easily  call  it  justice)  that  was  the  mover  here. 
There  was  a  wiser  way  than  that,  a  way  that,  for  all  the 
surface  falsehood  of  it,  held  a  nobler  truth  within. 

"No,  nothing  whatever  is  wrong,"  he  said.  "Excuse 
me:  I  must  telephone  to  the  bank,  to  say  the  cheque 
is  all  right.  Ah,  I'll  telephone  from  here  if  you  will 
allow  me." 

The  telephone  was  just  outside  and  Jim  heard  plainly 
all  that  passed.  The  number  was  rung  up,  and  then 
Claude  spoke. 

"Yes,  I'm  Mr.  Claude  Osborne.  I  am  speaking  to 
Mr.  Grayson,  am  I?  It  is  the  matter  that  Mr.  Humby 
came  to  speak  to  me  about  this  morning.  Yes,  yes: 
the  cheque  for  ^500.  I  find  I  have  made  a  complete 
error.  The  cheque  was  drawn  by  me  and  is  perfectly 
correct.  Yes.  It  was  very  stupid  of  me.  Please  let 
Mr.  Humby  know  as  soon  as  he  gets  back.  Yes.  Thank 
you.  Good  morning." 


THEOSBORNES  269 

Claude  paused  a  moment  with  the  receiver  in  his 
hand.  Then  he  called  to  Jim. 

"Can't  stop  a  moment,"  he  said.  "I've  the  devil 
of  a  lot  to  do.  Good-bye." 

He  walked  back  again  at  once  to  Park  Lane,  still 
thinking  intently,  still  wondering  if  he  could  have  done 
better  in  any  way.  Honest  all  through,  he  hated  with 
a  physical  repulsion  the  thought  of  what  he  felt  sure 
Jim  had  done,  but  oddly  enough,  instead  of  feeling  a 
crescendo  of  dislike  to  Jim  himself,  he  was  conscious 
only  of  a  puzzled  sort  of  pity.  By  instinct  he  separated 
the  deed  from  the  doer,  instead  of  bracketting  them 
both  in  one  clause  of  disgusted  condemnation.  And 
then  he  ceased  to  wonder  at  that:  it  seemed  natural, 
after  all. 

He  went  straight  up  to  Dora's  room,  and  found  her 
still  at  her  table  with  letters  round  her.  But  when  he 
entered  she  was  not  writing:  she  was  staring  out  of  the 
window  with  a  sort  of  terror  on  her  face.  Claude  guessed 
what  it  was  that  perhaps  had  put  it  there,  and  what 
lurked  behind  that  look  of  agonized  appeal  that  she 
turned  on  him. 

"I'm  sorry  for  being  so  long,  dear,"  he  said,  "but 
I've  been  making  a  fool  of  myself.  That  cheque  I 
spoke  to  you  about  is  quite  all  right.  I  found  the  counter- 
foil in  my  old  book  at  the  flat.  I  drew  it  right  enough. 
Mr.  Humby  expects  a  fellow  to  carry  in  his  head  the 
memory  of  every  half-crown  he  spends." 

Dora  gave  one  great  sobbing  sigh  of  relief,  which  she 
could  not  check. 

"I'm  glad,"  she  said.     "I  hated  to  think  that  Parker 


27o  THEOSBORNES 

perhaps  had  gone  wrong.  One — one  hates  suspicion, 
and  its  atmosphere." 

Claude  heard,  could  not  help  hearing  the  relief  in  the 
voice,  could  not  help  seeing  that  the  smile  she  gave  hkn 
struggled  like  mist-ridden  sunlight  to  shine  through  his 
dispelled  clouds  of  nameless  apprehension.  Nor  could 
his  secret  mind  avoid  guessing  what  that  apprehension 
was,  for  it  was  no  stranger  to  him;  he  had  been  sharer 
in  it  till  he  had  seen  Jim,  when  it  deepened  into  a  cer- 
tainty which  was  the  opposite  to  that  which  at  this 
moment  brought  such  relief  to  his  wife.  The  other 
certainty,  his  own,  must  of  course  be  kept  sealed  and 
locked  from  her,  and  Claude  hastened  to  convey  it  away 
from  her  presence,  so  to  speak,  by  talking  of  something 
else,  for  fear  that  it  might,  in  despite  of  him,  betray  some 
hint  of  its  existence. 

"But  there  was  something  you  wanted  to  speak  to 
me  about,"  he  said. 

"Yes.  It  is  about  your  mother.  Do  you  think  she 
is  well?" 

"No,  I  haven't  thought  so  for  the  last  three  or  four 
days,"  said  he.  "What  have  you  noticed?" 

"I  went  into  her  room  just  now,"  said  Dora,  "and 
she  was  sitting  and  doing  nothing.  And  she  was  crying." 

Claude  paused  in  astonishment. 

"Crying,"  he  said.     "The  mater  crying?" 

"Yes.  She  clearly  did  not  wish  me  to  see  it,  and  so 
I  pretended  not  to.  I  had  thought  she  wasn't  well 
before  now.  We  must  do  something,  Claude;  make 
her  see  a  doctor." 

"But  why  hasn't  she  been  to  see  a  doctor  all  these 


THEOSBORNES  271 

days?"  he  asked.  "The  governor  goes  to  a  doctor  if 
his  nails  want  cutting." 

"I  don't  know  why  she  hasn't  been.  There  might 
be  several  reasons.  But  I  thought  I  would  speak  to 
you  first  and  then  if  you  approved  I  would  go  to  her 
and  try  to  find  out  what  is  the  matter." 

"I  wish  you  would,"  he  said. 

Dora  got  up,  but  her  mind  went  back  to  that  which 
she  had  been  brooding  over  in  his  absence,  that  which 
frightened  her. 

"Did  you  see  Jim?"  she  asked. 

"Yes:  he  came  in  when  I  was  there." 

"How  was  he?"  she  asked  negligently. 

"Oh,  much  as  usual.  I  couldn't  stop  because  I 
wanted  to  get  back  to  you.  Will  you  come  and  tell 
me  about  the  mater,  after  you  have  seen  her?" 

Dora  went  back  to  Lady  Osborne's  room,  and  knocked 
before  she  entered.  The  apparition  of  her  sitting  and 
crying  all  alone  had  frightened  her  more  than  she  had 
let  Claude  see,  for  as  a  rule  her  mother-in-law's  cheer- 
fulness was  of  a  quality  that  seemed  to  be  proof  against 
all  the  minor  accidents  of  life,  and  Dora  remembered 
how,  one  day  in  Italy,  when  they  had  missed  a  train 
at  Padua,  and  had  to  wait  three  hours,  Lady  Osborne's 
only  comment  had  been,  "Well,  now,  that  will  give  us 
time  to  look  about  us."  She  was  afraid  therefore  that 
the  cause  of  her  tears  was  not  trivial. 

And  now,  when  she  went  in  again,  receiving  a  rather 
indistinct  answer  to  her  knock,  she  found  Lady  Osborne 
hastily  snatching  up  the  day's  paper,  so  as  to  pretend 


272  THEOSBORNES 

to  be  occupied.  But  her  face  wore  an  expression  extra- 
ordinarily contorted,  as  if  her  habitual  geniality  found 
it  a  hard  task  to  struggle  to  the  surface. 

"And  I'm  sure  the  paper  gets  more  and  more  inter- 
esting every  day,"  said  she,  "though  it's  seldom  I  find 
time  to  have  a  glance  at  all  the  curious  things  that  are 
going  on  in  the  world.  What  a  dreadful  place  Morocco 
must  be;  I  couldn't  sleep  quiet  in  my  bed  if  I  was  there! 
What  is  it,  my  dear?" 

On  her  face  and  in  her  voice  the  trace  of  tears  bravely 
suppressed  still  lingered,  and  a  great  wave  of  pity  suddenly 
swept  over  Dora.  Something  was  wrong,  something 
which  at  present  Lady  Osborne  was  bearing  in  secret, 
for  it  was  quite  clear  that  her  husband,  whose  cheerfulness 
at  breakfast  had  bordered  on  the  boisterous,  knew  nothing, 
nor  did  Claude  know.  Her  mother-in-law,  as  Dora  was 
well  aware,  was  not  a  woman  of  complicated  or  subtle 
emotion,  who  could  grieve  over  an  imagined  sorrow, 
or  could  admit  to  a  personal  relation  writh  herself  the 
woe  of  the  world,  for  with  more  practical  wisdom  she 
gave  subscriptions  to  those  whose  task  it  was  to  alleviate 
any  particular  branch  of  it.  Her  family,  her  hospitalities, 
her  comfortable  though  busy  life  had  been  sufficient 
up  till  now  to  minister  to  her  happiness,  and  if  something 
disturbed  that,  Dora  rightly  thought  that  it  must  be 
something  tangible  and  personal.  So  she  went  to  the 
sofa,  and  sat  down  by  her,  and  did  not  seek  to  be  subtle. 

"What  is  it?"  she  said.  "Is  there  anything  the 
matter?" 

The  simplicity  was  not  calculated;  it  was  perfectly 
natural,  and  had  its  effect.  Lady  Osborne  held  the 


THE    OSBORNES  273 

paper  in  front  of  her  a  moment  longer,  but  it  was  shaken 
with  the  trembling  of  her  hands.  Then  she  dropped  it. 

"My  dear,  I  am  a  selfish  old  woman,"  she  said,  "but 
I  can't  bear  it  any  longer.  I've  not  been  well  this  long 
time,  but  I've  tried  to  tell  myself  it  was  my  imagination, 
and  not  bother  anybody.  And  I  could  have  held  on, 
my  dear,  a  little  longer,  if  you  hadn't  come  to  me  like 
this.  I  warrant  you,  there  would  have  been  plenty  of 
laughing  and  chaff  at  Grote  this  week-end,  as  always. 
But  the  pain  this  morning  was  so  bad  that  I  just  thought 
I  would  have  a  bit  of  a  cry  all  to  myself." 

"But  why  have  you  told  nobody?"  said  Dora.  "Not 
Claude,  nor  Dad  nor  me?" 

Lady  Osborne  mopped  her  eyes. 

"Bless  your  heart,  haven't  we  all  got  things  to  bear, 
and  best  not  to  trouble  others?"  she  said.  "I  know 
well  enough  how  you'd  all  spend  your  time  in  looking 
after  me,  and  having  the  doctor  and  what  not,  and  I 
thought  I  could  get  through  to  the  end  of  the  season 
and  then  go  and  rest,  and  see  what  was  the  matter. 
And,  my  dearie,  I'm  a  dreadful  coward  you  know,  and 
I  couldn't  abear  the  thought  of  being  pulled  about  by 
the  doctor,  and  maybe  worse  than  that.  Anyhow, 
I've  not  given  in  at  once.  Some  days  my  colour  has 
been  awful  and  no  appetite,  but  I've  kept  my  spirits 
up  before  you  all.  And  I  can't  bear  to  think  now  that 
I  must  give  in,  and  have  to  take  doctor's  stuff,  and  lie 
up,  spoiling  all  your  pleasure.  But  I  don't  think  as  I 
can  go  on  much  longer  like  this.  Perhaps  it's  best  that 
you  know.  Poor  Eddie!  Him  and  his  jokes  this 
morning  at  breakfast,  chaffing  me  about  Sir  Thomas! 


274  THEOSBORNES 

Lor*,  my  dear,  what  spirits  he  has!  I  declare  he  quite 
took  my  thoughts  off.  And  about  Claude  and  Lizzie 
too,  as  if  Claude  ever  gave  a  thought  to  anyone  but 
yourself." 

Lady  Osborne  patted  Dora's  hand  a  moment  in 
silence.  She  was  not  sure  that  Dora  had  " relished" 
her  husband's  fun  at  breakfast;  now  was  the  time  to 
set  it  right. 

"But  then,  Eddie  knew  that,  else  he'd  never  have 
made  a  joke  of  it,"  she  said.  "And  you,  my  dearie,  have 
been  so  sweet  to  me  these  weeks,  not  that  you  haven't 
been  that  always,  as  if  you  was  my  own  daughter. 
Indeed,  not  that  I  complain  of  Lizzie,  for  I  don't,  often 
and  often  she's  behaved  high  to  Mr.  O.  and  me,  when 
you,  who  have  excuse  enough,  have  never  done  such 
a  thing.  Often  I've  said  to  him,  'It's  as  if  Dora  was 
an  Osborne  herself.'  Thank  you,  my  dearie,  for  that, 
and  for  all  you've  done  and  been.  I  daresay  it's  been 
difficult  for  you  at  times,  but  there !  I  daresay  you  think 
I've  not  noticed,  but  I  have,  my  dear,  and  you've  behaved 
beautiful  always.  I  wanted  just  to  say  that,  and  you're 
behaving  sweet  and  kind  to  me  still." 

Somehow,  deep  down,  this  cut  Dora  like  a  knife. 
There  was  a  wounding  pathos  about  it,  that  made  those 
efforts  she  had  put  forth  to  behave  decently,  appear 
infinitely  trivial,  humiliatingly  cheap.  And  the  gentle 
patting  on  her  hand  continued. 

"And  now,  dearie,  I'm  going  to  ask  you  to  do  another 
thing  yet,"  said  Lady  Osborne,  "and  that  is  to  take  my 
place  down  at  Grote  this  Sunday,  and  let  me  stay  up 
here  and  see  my  doctoi  this  afternoon.  If  you  hadn't 


THEOSBORNES  275 

such  quick  and  loving  eyes,  I  should  have  gone  through 
with  it  and  held  on,  my  dear,  even  if  there  was  more 
mornings  like  this  in  store.  But  with  you  knowing, 
my  dear,  I'll  not  wait  longer,  and  maybe  make  matters 
worse,  though  perhaps  it's  me  as  has  been  making  a 
fuss  about  nothing,  and  a  bottle  of  medicine  will  make 
me  as  fit  as  a  flea  again,  as  Mr.  O.  used  to  say.  Now 
we  must  put  our  heads  together  and  contrive,  so  that 
he  may  think  it's  just  a  touch  of  the  liver  and  nothing 
to  be  alarmed  for,  else  he'll  never  go  and  leave  me. 
He's  gone  off  already  to  some  committee,  and  the  car 
is  to  call  for  him  at  twelve  and  drive  him  straight  down, 
so  that  he'll  find  himself  at  Grote  before  he  knows 
anything  is  wrong.  And  then,  my  dear,  you  must  do 
your  best  to  make  him  think  it's  nothing,  as,  please  God, 
it  isn't.  What  a  trouble  our  insides  are,  though,  to 
be  sure,  mine's  given  me  little  enough  to  complain  of 
all  these  years.  I've  always  eaten  my  dinner  and  got 
a  good  night's  rest  until  this  began." 

They  talked  long,  "contriving,"  as  Lady  Osborne 
had  said,  the  sole  point  of  the  contrivance  being  that 
her  husband  should  enjoy  his  day  or  two  at  Grote,  and 
have  everything  to  his  liking,  and  not  fret  about  her. 
Once  and  again  and  again  once,  Dora  tried  to  lead 
the  conversation  back  to  Lady  Osborne  herself,  to  get 
from  her  some  inkling  of  what  her  indisposition  might 
be,  what  its  symptoms  were,  with  a  view  of  encouraging 
her  to  face  the  doctor  with  equanimity,  for  this  was 
clearly  an  ordeal  she  dreaded.  And  on  Dora's  third 
attempt  she  put  an  end  to  further  questions. 


276  THEOSBORNES 

"I  think,  dearie,  we'll  not  talk  about  that,"  she  said, 
"because,  as  I  told  you,  I'm  such  a  coward  as  never 
was,  and  the  more  I  think  about  it,  the  more  coward  I 
shall  be  when  I  get  to  the  doctor's  door.  It  was  just 
the  same  with  me  about  my  teeth  before  I  lost  them  all: 
if  one  had  to  come  out,  I  had  such  a  shrinking  from 
a  bit  of  pain,  that  if  I  thought  about  it,  I  knew  I  shouldn't 
go  to  the  dentist  at  all.  So  I  used  to  busy  myself  with 
oth^r  things,  and  plan  a  treat,  maybe,  for  the  working 
folk,  or  an  extra  good  dinner  for  Mr.  O.,  or  a  surprise 
for  Per  or  Claude;  and  it's  a  similar  to  that  what  I'll  do 
now,  if  you  don't  mind.  And  I  assure  you  I'm  so 
bothered  over  the  thought  of  you  and  Dad  being  at 
Grote  without  me  that  I've  little  desire  to  think  about 
anything  else.  Thirty-five  years  it  is  last  May,  my  dear, 
since  we  took  each  other  for  better  or  worse,  and  it's 
always  been  better,  and  not  a  night  since  then,  I  assure 
you,  have  we  not  slept  under  the  same  roof,  and  in  the 
same  room  save  when  I  had  a  cold  and  feared  to  give 
it  him.  And  he's  got  to  depend  on  me,  Gold  bless  him, 
and  knows  that  I  shall  see  he  has  a  biscuit  or  two  on  a 
plate  by  his  bedside  and  a  glass  of  milk,  against  he  wakes 
the  night.  Servants  are  never  to  be  trusted,  my  dear, 
though  I'm  sure  it's  a  shame  to  say  it,  when  ours  are  so 
attentive.  But  he's  got  a  new  valet  just  of  late,  and  if 
you  could  peep  in  at  my  lord's  bedroom  door  when  you 
went  up  to  bed,  and  see  as  all  was  prepared,  and  that  his 
slippers  was  put  where  he  can  see  them  in  his  dressing 
room,  else  he'll  walk  to  bed  in  his  bare  feet  and  step  on 
a  pin  or  a  tack  someday,  which  I  always  dread  for  him. 
And  if  he  comes  in  hot,  as  he's  taken  to  do  in  this  weather 


THEOSBORNES  277 

from  his  walk,  just  you  behave  as  if  you  was  me,  and 
say  to  him,  'Mr.  O.,  you  go  and  change  your  vest  and 
your  socks,  else  I  don't  pour  out  your  cup  of  tea/  and 
knowing  as  you'll  do  that  will  take  a  load  off  my  mind, 
and  I  shall  go  to  the  doctor  this  afternoon,  knowing  as 
you  are  looking  after  him  as  if  I  was  there,  as  comfortable 
as  if  I  was  going  to  have  a  cheque  cashed  for  me.  And, 
my  dear,  if  you'd  sit  next  him  in  church,  and  just  nudge 
him  if  he  attempts  to  follow  the  lesson  without  putting 
his  glasses  on.  It's  small  print  in  his  Bible,  and  never 
another  one  will  he  let  me  give  him,  just  because  it  was 
that  one  he  used  to  read  out  of  to  me  when  we  were 
in  Cornwall  on  our  wedding  trip,  and  sometimes  no 
church  within  distance.  But  be  sure  be  changes  his 
underwear,  my  dear,  when  he  comes  in,  for  he  catches 
cold  easy,  and  his  skin  acts  so  well  that  it's  as  if 
he'd  had  a  bath.  And  give  him  plenty  of  milk  in  his 
coffee  at  breakfast,  not  that  he  likes  it,  but  he  will 
have  the  coffee  made  so  strong  that  it's  enough  to 
rasp  the  coats  of  the  stomach,  as  they  say,  unless  you 
drown  it  in  milk.  And  you'll  cheer  him  up,  I  know, 
my  dear,  if  he  gets  anxious,  and  just  say  to  him  'Stuff 
and  nonsense,  Dad,  Mrs.  O.'s  had  a  bit  of  an  upset, 
same  as  you  have  times  without  number,  and  she's 
always  nervous  about  herself,  and  has  gone  to  see  the 
doctor,  and  as  like  as  not  will  come  down  to-morrow 
afternoon  with  a  couple  of  pills  in  her  pocket,  and  ready 
to  be  laughed  at  to  your  heart's  content.'  That's  what 
I  want  you  to  say,  my  dear,  though  you'll  put  it  in 
your  own  words,  and  much  better  I'm  sure.  But 
to-day  it's  as  if  I  feel  I  couldn't  go  and  look  after 


278  THEOSBORNES 

my  friends,  now  that  I  know  you'll  take  my  place,  for 
when  there's  a  multitude  in  the  house,  sometimes  the 
mistress  can't  get  to  bed  till  it  maybe  is  one  o'clock 
or  worse,  and  I  want  a  good  long  night.  I  shall  try 
to  see  Sir  Henry  as  soon  as  may  be,  and  after  that  I 
don't  doubt  I  shall  just  get  to  bed  and  sleep  the  clock 
round.  I'm  so  tired,  my  dear,  and  there's  something 

Well,  I  make  no  doubt  that  before  many  hours 

are  out,  we  shall  all  be  laughing  together  over  my  silliness, 
and  Mr.  O.  will  be  asking  if  I  have  taken  enough  phos- 
phorus jelly,  or  what  not.  Lor',  he'll  never  let  me  hear 
the  last  of  it!" 

That  was  a  triumphant  conclusion.  The  whole  speech 
punctuated  by  silences,  punctuated  by  a  little  dropping 
of  tears  and  by  a  little  laughter,  was  hardly  less  triumphant. 
Once,  ages  ago,  so  it  seemed  to  Dora,  Claude  had  held 
up  his  father  and  mother  as  examples  of  the  ideal  antidote 
against  the  gray-business  of  middle  age,  and  it  had  failed 
to  satisfy  her  then.  She  would  have  thought  it  comical, 
had  not  there  been  some  very  keen  sense  of  disappointment 
about  it,  that  a  lover  should  speak  to  his  beloved  in  such 
language.  But  now-,  with  rekindled  meaning,  she  re- 
membered the  incident  and  its  setting.  She  had  asked 
him  for  consolation  with  regard  to  the  gray-business 
that  awaited  everybody,  hoping  to  hear  words  of  glowing 
romance,  and  had  found  it  half  comical,  half  tragic, 
that  he  refuted  her  doubts  by  the  visible  example  of 
his  father  and  mother.  He  had  said  that  she  "was  his 
best  girl  still."  But  now  Dora  did  not  feel  either  the 
comedy  or  the  tragedy  of  his  reply;  she  felt  only  the 


THEOSBORNES  279 

truth  of  it.  And  she  did  not  wonder  that  her  mother- 
in-law  was  Dad's  best  girl  still. 

But  for  herself,  though  there  was  heartache  in  much 
that  had  been  said,  there  was  the  beginning  of  under- 
standing also,  or,  at  any  rate,  the  awakening  of  the  sense 
that  there  was  something  to  understand.  Lady  Osborne 
had  called  herself  a  coward,  and  reiterated  that  charge, 
with  regard  to  seeing  a  doctor  only.  But  love  —  a 
golden  barrier  of  solid  defence,  no  filagree  work  —  had 
come  between  her  and  her  fear;  yet  it  was  scarcely 
true  to  say  that  it  had  come  there:  it  was  always  there. 
Once  Dora  had  thought  that,  compared  to  romance, 
any  relation  that  could  exist  between  Claude's  parents, 
must  necessarily  be  of  an  ash-cold  quality.  But  was 
it?  She  herself  had  known  the  romantic,  but  in  com- 
parison with  all  that  she  had  been  conscious  of  with 
regard  to  Claude  for  the  last  few  weeks  she  could 
not  call  Lady  Osborne  ash-cold.  In  her  there  was 
some  glow,  some  authentic  fire  that  had  never  known 
quenching.  It  might  have  altered  in  superficial,  for 
flames  there  might  have  been  substituted  the  glowing 
heart  of  the  fire.  But  it  was  the  same  fire.  There  had 
not  been  ashes  at  any  time:  the  fire  always  burned, 
unconsumed,  with  no  waste  of  cinder;  it  was  immortal, 
radium-like. 

Then  for  the  first  time  the  beauty  of  it  struck  her. 
Before  this  moment  she  had  seen  something  that  appeared 
comical;  then,  with  better  vision,  she  had  seen  something 
that  struck  her  as  pathetic.  Now  with  true  vision  she 
saw  all  she  had  missed  before — Beauty.  It  was  that 
she  had  worshipped  all  her  life,  thinking  that  she  would 


28o  THEOSBORNES 

always  recognize  and  adore.  But  she  had  missed  it 
altogether  in  that  which  was  so  constantly  under  her 
eyes.  She  had  been  too  quick  in  seeing  all  that  was 
obvious:  wealth,  indiscriminate  hospitality,  vulgarity 
(since  she  had  chosen  to  call  it  so) ;  but  the  big  thing, 
that  which  was  the  essential,  she  had  missed  altogether. 
Once  before,  when  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Osborne  shared  a 
hymn-book  in  church,  she  had  seen,  and  thought  she 
understood.  Now  she  was  beginning  to  understand. 
She  began  to  want  to  take  other  hearts  into  her  own. 
The  desire  was  there.  The  beauty  she  had  at  last  seen 
attracted  her,  drew  her  to  it.  Strangely  had  it  been 
unveiled,  by  tale  of  slippers  and  biscuits  and  underwear. 
She  never  had  expected  to  find  it  in  such  garb.  But 
Claude  had  known  it  was  there;  he  had  not  been  diverted 
by  superficial  things,  but  had  seen  always  that  "the 
mater  was  the  governor's  best  girl  still." 

Dora  left  her  mother-in-law  that  morning  with  a  sense 
of  humility,  a  sense  also  of  disgust  at  herself  for  her 
own  stupidity.  All  these  months  a  thing  as  beautiful 
as  this  great  love  and  tenderness  had  been  in  front  of 
her  eyes,  and  she  had  not  troubled  to  look  at  it  with 
enough  attention  to  recognize  that  there  was  beauty 
there.  But  now  the  tears  that  dimmed  her  own  eyes 
quickened  her  vision.  At  last  she  saw  the  picture  in 
its  true  value,  and  it  made  her  ashamed.  Was  she 
equally  blind,  too,  with  regard  to  Claude?  Was  there 
something  in  him,  some  great  thing  which  mattered 
so  much  that  all  which  for  months  had  got  on  her  nerves 
more  and  more  every  day  was,  if  seen  truly,  as  trivial 


THE    OSBORNES  281 

as  she  now  saw  were  those  things  that  had  blinded  her 
in  the  case  of  Lady  Osborne?  It  might  be  so;  all  she 
knew  was  that  if  it  was  there,  she  }iad  not  troubled  to 
look  for  it.  At  first  she  had  so  loved  his  beauty  that 
nothing  else  mattered;  nor  did  it  seem  to  her  possible 
that  love  could  ever  be  diminished  or  suffer  eclipse. 
But  that  had  happened,  even  before  she  had  borne  a 
child  to  him;  and  to  take  its  place  (and  more  than  take  its 
place)  there  had  sprung  up  no  herbs  of  more  fragrant 
beauty  than  the  scarlet  of  that  first  flower.  She  had  noth- 
ing in  her  garden  for  him  but  herbs  of  bitterness  and 
resentment.  That,  at  least,  was  all  she  knew  of  till  now. 

She  paused  a  moment  outside  the  door  of  the  sitting 
room  where  she  had  left  him,  before  entering,  for  she 
knew  his  devotion  to  his  mother,  and  was  sorry  for  him. 
And  somehow  she  felt  herself  unable  to  believe  that 
Lady  Osborne's  optimistic  forecast  would  be  justified; 
she  did  not  think  that  in  a  few  hours  they  would  be  all 
laughing  over  her  imaginary  ailment.  And  Claude 
must  see  that  she  was  anxious;  it  would  be  better  to 
confess  to  that,  and  prepare  him  for  the  possibility  of 
there  being  something  serious  in  store. 

He  looked  up  quickly  as  she  came  in,  throwing  away 
the  cigarette  he  had  only  just  begun. 

"Well?"  he  said. 

Dora  heard  the  tremble  and  trouble  in  that  one  word, 
and  she  was  sorry  for  him.  That  particular  emotion 
she  had  never  felt  for  him  before;  she  had  never  seen 
him  except  compassed  about  with  serene  prosperity. 

" Claude,  I'm  afraid  she  is  ill,"  she  said.  "She  feels 
it  herself  too.  She  has  been  in  great  pain." 


282  THEOSBORNES 

"But  how  long  has  it  been  going  on?"  he  asked. 
"Why  hasn't  she  seen  a  doctor?" 

"Because  she  didn't  want  to  spoil  things  for  us.  She 
thought  she  could  hold  on.  But  she  is  going  now, 
to-day." 

"What  does  she  think  it  is?"  asked  he. 

"She  wouldn't  talk  of  it  at  all,"  said  Dora.  "I  think 
she  could  hardly  think  of  it,  because  she  was  thinking 
of  Dad  so  much.  She  won't  come  down  to  Grote,  you 
see,  but  stop  up  here,  unless  she  is  told  it  is  nothing.  And 
so  we  must  do  our  best  that  he  shan't  be  anxious  or 
unhappy  until  we  know  whether  there  is  real  cause  or 
not.  She  wants  me  particularly  to  go  down  there,  or 
of  course  I  would  stop  with  her." 

"The  mater  must  feel  pretty  bad  if  she's  not  coming 
to  Grote,"  said  he. 

"Yes,  I  am  afraid  she  does.  Oh,  Claude,  I  am  so 
sorry  for  her,  and  you  all.  Her  bravery  has  made  us 
all  blind.  I  ought  to  have  seen  long  ago.  I  reproach 
myself  bitterly." 

"No,  no,  there's  no  cause  for  that,"  said  he  gently. 
"She's  taken  us  all  in,  and  it's  just  like  her.  Besides, 
who  knows?  it  may  be  nothing  in  the  least  serious." 

"I  know  that,"  said  she,  "and  we  won't  be  anxious 
before  we  have  cause.  Go  and  see  her,  dear,  before 
we  start,  and  make  very  light  of  it;  just  say  you  are 
glad  she  is  being  sensible  at  last,  in  going  to  be  put  right. 
There  is  no  cause  for  anxiety  yet.  I  shall  go  round 
to  Sir  Henry's  and  arrange  an  appointment  for  her  this 
afternoon,  if  possible,  and  get  him  to  write  to  us  very 
fully  this  evening,  so  that  we  shall  know  to-morrow.  And 


THEOSBORNES  283 

then,  if  we  are  to  get  down  by  lunch,  it  will  be  time  for 
us  to  start.    I  ordered  the  motor  for  twelve." 

Lord  Osborne  was  a  good  deal  perturbed  at  the  news 
with  which  Dora  met  him  at  Grote,  and  it  was  an  affair 
that  demanded  careful  handling  to  induce  him  not  to 
go  back  at  once  to  town  and  see  her. 

"Bless  me!  Maria  not  well  enough  to  come  down,  and 
you  expect  me  to  take  my  Sunday  off,  and  eat  my  dinner 
as  if  my  old  lady  was  a-seated  opposite  me?"  he  asked. 
"Not  I,  my  dear;  Maria's  and  my  place  is  together, 
wherever  that  place  may  be." 

"But  you  can't  go  against  her  wish,  Dad,"  said  Dora. 
"And  what's  to  become  of  me  if  you  do?  I've  been 
sent  down  on  purpose  to  play  at  being  her.  You've 
got  to  have  a  glass  of  milk  by  your  bed,  and  a  couple 
of  biscuits.  Oh,  I  know  all  about  it!" 

"To  think  of  your  knowing  that!"  he  said,  rather 
struck  by  this  detail. 

"Yes,  but  only  this  morning  did  I  know  it,"  said  Dora. 
"I  sat  with  her  a  long  time,  and  all  she  could  think 
about  was  that  you  should  be  comfortable  down  here." 

"Well,  it  goes  against  the  grain  not  to  be  with  her," 
said  he.  "But,  as  you  say,  there's  no  cause  to  be 
ilarmed  yet.  And  Sir  Henry's  going  to  see  her  this 
afternoon?" 

"Yes,  and  telegraph  to  me  afterward.  Dad,  if  you 
upset  all  our  beautiful  arrangements,  neither  she  nor  I 
will  ever  speak  to  you  again.  Oh!  do  be  good." 

"But  it  won't  be  like  home  not  to  have  Lady  O.  here," 
said  he. 


284  THEOSBORNES 

"She  knows  that;  but  Claude  and  I  have  to  make  as 
good  an  imitation  as  we  can.  And  you'll  put  me  in  a 
dreadful  hole  if  you  go  back  to  town.  She  will  say  I 
have  made  no  hand  of  looking  after  you  at  all.  I  shall 
be  in  disgrace,  as  well  as  you." 

"Well,  God  bless  you,  my  dear!"  said  he,  "and  thank 
you  for  being  so  good  to  us.  Here  I'll  stop,  if  it's  the 
missus's  wish.  No,  I  don't  fancy  any  pudding  to-day, 
thank  you." 

Dora  laid  down  her  spoon  and  fork. 

"Dad,  not  one  morsel  do  I  eat  unless  you  have  some!" 
she  said.  "And  I'm  dreadfully  hungry." 

Lord  Osborne  laughed  within  himself. 

"Eh!  you've  got  a  managing  wife,  Claude,"  he  said. 
"She  twists  us  all  round  her  little  ringer." 

The  expected  telegram  arrived  in  the  course  of  the 
evening,  and  though  it  contained  nothing  definite,  Lord 
Osborne  was  able  to  interpret  it  in  the  most  optimistic 
manner. 

"Well,  Sir  Henry  tells  you  that  Mrs.  O.'s  in  no  pain, 
and  that  he's  going  to  see  her  again  to-morrow,"  he 
said.  "Why,  I  call  that  good  news,  and  it  relieves  my 
mind,  my  dear.  Bless  her!  she'll  get  a  good  night's 
rest,  I  hope  now,  and  feel  a  different  creature  in  the 
morning.  There's  nothing  else  occurs  to  you,  my  dear? 
Surely  he  would  have  said  if  he  had  found  anything 
really  wrong?" 

Dora  read  the  telegram  again. 

"No;  I  think  you  are  quite  right  to  put  that  inter- 
pretation on  it,"  she  said  truthfully  enough.  "We'll 


THEOSBORNES  285 

hope  to  get  good  news  again  to-morrow.  I  am  glad 
she  is  out  of  pain." 

But  secretly  she  feared  something  she  did  not  say- 
namely,  that  there  was  something  wrong,  but  that  Sir 
Henry  had  not  been  able  without  further  examination 
to  say  what  it  was.  Yet,  after  all,  that  interpretation  might 
be  only  imagination  on  her  part.  But  there  was  nothing 
in  the  telegram  which  appeared  to  her  to  be  meant  to 
allay  the  anxiety  which  he  must  know  existed. 

Dora  went  to  bed  that  evening  with  a  great  many 
things  to  think  about,  which  had  to  be  faced,  not  shirked 
or  put  aside.  The  day,  which  by  the  measure  of  events 
had  been  almost  without  incident,  seemed  terribly  full 
of  meaning  to  her.  Lady  Osborne  had  seen  a  doctor; 
she  had  talked  over  domestic  affairs  with  Dora  .  .  . 
that  was  not  quite  all :  Claude  had  thought  that  a  cheque 
had  been  forged,  but  found  on  examination  that  he  had 
made  a  mistake.  Set  out  like  that,  there  seemed  little 
here  that  could  occupy  her  thoughts  at  all,  still  less  that 
could  keep  away  from  her  the  sleep  that  in  general  was 
so  punctual  a  visitor  to  her.  But  to-night  it  did  not 
come  near  her,  and  she  did  not  even  try  to  woo  its 
approach.  She  had  no  thought  of  sleep,  though  she 
was  glad  to  have  the  darkness  and  the  silence  round 
her  so  that  she  might  think  without  distraction.  All 
these  things,  trivial  as  events,  seemed  to  her  to  be  sig- 
nificant, to  hold  possibilities,  potentialities,  altogether 
disproportionate  to  their  face  value.  It  might  prove 
not  to  be  so  when  she  examined  them;  it  might  be  that 
for  some  reason  a  kind  of  nightmare  inflation  was  going 
on  in  her  mind,  so  that,  as  in  physical  nightmare  things 


286  THE    OSBORNES 

swell  to  gigantic  shape,  in  her  imagination  these  simple 
little  things  were  puffed  to  grotesque  and  terrifying 
magnitude.  She  had  to  think  them  over  calmly  and 
carefully;  it  might  easily  be  that  they  would  sink  to 
normal  size  again. 

She  took  first  that  affair  of  the  cheque,  which  had 
turned  out,  apparently,  to  be  no  affair  at  all.  Claude 
had  made  a  mistake,  so  he  had  himself  said,  and  the 
cheque  which  he  and  the  bank  had  suspected  was  per- 
fectly genuine.  But  Dora,  between  the  time  of  his 
thinking  there  was  something  wrong  and  of  his  ascer- 
taining that  there  was  not,  had  passed  a  very  terrible 
quarter  of  an  hour — one  that  it  made  her  feel  sick 
to  think  of  even  now.  There  was  no  use  in  blinking 
it;  she  had  feared  that  Jim  had  forged  her  husband's 
cheque.  She  had  hardly  given  a  thought  to  what  the 
consequences  might  be;  what  turned  her  white  and 
cold  was  the  thought  that  he  had  done  it.  Her  pen 
had  spluttered  when  the  thought  first  occurred  to  her, 
but  she  believed  Claude  had  not  noticed  that.  But 
had  he  noticed  the  sob  of  relief  in  her  voice  when  he 
told  her  that  the  cheque  was  all  right?  He  was  not 
slow  to  observe,  his  perceptions,  especially  where  she 
was  concerned,  were  remarkably  vivid,  and  it  seemed 
to  her  that  he  must  have  noticed  it.  Yet  he  had  said 
nothing. 

Anyhow  the  cheque  was  correct,  and  she  was  left 
with  the  fact  that  it  had  seemed  to  her  possible  that  Jim 
had  been  guilty  of  this  gross  meanness.  And,  just  as 
if  the  thing  had  been  true,  she  found  herself  trying  to 
excuse  him,  saw  herself  pleading  with  Claude  for  him. 


THEOSBORNES  287 

Poor  Jim  was  not  ...  was  not  quite  like  other  people: 
he  did  not  seem  to  know  right  from  wrong.  He  had 
always  cheated  at  games;  she  remembered  telling  Claude 
so  one  day  down  here  at  Grote,  when  he  and  Jim  had 
been  playing  croquet  and  Jim  had  cheated.  But  they 
had  not  been  playing  for  money.  So  Claude  had  told 
her.  And  he  had  told  her  the  cheque  was  all  right. 
That  was  all:  there  was  nothing  more  to  be  thought  of 
with  regard  to  this. 

Yet  she  still  lingered  on  the  threshold  of  the  thought 
of  it.  Jim  had  got  "cleaned  out"  (his  own  phrase) 
in  the  Derby  week,  had  pledged  the  quarter's  rent  of 
Grote  in  advance  to  pay  his  Derby  debts.  And  some- 
body had  told  her  that  Jim  had  lost  heavily  at  New- 
market afterward,  and  he  had  told  her  that  he  had  paid 
and  was  upright  before  the  world  in  the  matter  of  debts 
of  honour. 

She  had  passed  the  threshold  of  that  thought  and  was 
inside  again.  Where  had  he  got  the  money  from? 
Well,  anyhow,  not  by  forgery.  Claude  had  said  that 
the  mistake  was  his.  But  how  odd  that  he  should  not 
have  been  able  to  recollect  about  a  cheque  for  five 
hundred  pounds,  drawn  only  ten  days  before! 

Dora  still  lingered  in  the  precincts  of  that  thought, 
though  she  beckoned,  so  to  speak,  another  thought  to 
distract  her.  What  a  wonderful  thing,  how  triumphant 
and  beautiful  was  the  love  of  which  she  had  seen  a  glimpse 
to-day!  It  was  all  the  more  wonderful  because  it  seemed 
to  be  common,  to  be  concerned  with  biscuits  and  coffee. 
A  hundred  times  she  had  seen  Lady  Osborne  wrapped 


288  THEOSBORNES 

up  in  such  infinitesimal  cares  as  these,  and  had  thought 
only  that  her  mind  and  her  soul  were  altogether  concerned 
with  serving,  that  the  provision  for  the  comfortable  house 
and  the  good  dinner  was  aspiration  sufficient  for  her 
spiritual  capacity.  Yet  there  had  always  been  a  little 
more  than  that:  there  had  been  the  moment  in  church 
when  the  sermon  was  to  her  taste,  and  the  hymn  a 
favourite,  and  she  and  her  husband  had  tunelessly  sung 
out  of  one  book.  That  had  touched  Dora  a  little,  but 
she  had  then  dismissed  it  as  a  banal  affair  of  goody- 
goody  combined  with  a  melodious  tune,  when  she  saw 
the  great  lunch  that  they  both  ate  immediately  afterward. 

But  now  these  details,  these  Martha-cares  had  taken 
a  different  value.  This  morning  Lady  Osborne  had  been 
in  great  pain,  had  broken  down  in  her  endeavour  to 
carry  on  somehow,  and  was  face  to  face  with  a  medical 
interview  which  she  dreaded.  But  still  she  could  think 
with  meticulous  care  of  her  husband's  milk,  of  his  slippers, 
of  his  tendency  toward  strong  coffee.  What  if  below 
the  Martha  was  Mary,  if  it  was  Mary's  love  that  made 
Martha  so  sedulous  in  serving? 

All  that  she  had  overlooked,  not  caring  to  see  below 
a  surface  which  she  said  was  commonplace  and 
prosperous.  The  surface  was  transparent  enough,  too: 
it  was  not  opaque.  She  could  have  seen  down  into  the 
depths  at  any  time  if  she  had  taken  the  trouble  to  look. 

Before  her  marriage  and  for  a  few  months  after 
it,  she  had  thought  she  knew  what  "depths"  meant. 
She  thought  she  knew  what  it  was  to  be  absorbed  in 
another.  Then  had  come  her  disillusionment.  She 
had  worshipped  surface  only:  she  knew  no  mare  of 


THEOSBORNES  289 

Claude  than  that.  She  had  loved  his  beauty,  she  had 
got  accustomed  to  it.  She  had  at  first  disregarded  what 
she  had  grown  to  call  his  vulgarity,  and  had  not  got 
accustomed  to  it.  She  had  known  he  was  honest  and 
true  and  safe,  but  she  had  grown  to  take  all  that  for 
granted.  She  had  never  studied  him,  looked  for  what 
was  himself,  she  had  had  few  glimpses  of  him,  no  more 
than  she  had  had  of  his  mother.  But  to-day  she  felt 
that  with  regard  to  her  these  glimpses  were  fused  together : 
they  made  a  view,  a  prospect  of  a  very  beautiful  country. 
But  as  yet  there  had  no  fusing  like  that  come  with  regard 
to  her  husband.  Now  that  she  "saw,"  even  the  country, 
the  country  of  the  gray-business  was  beautiful.  And  at 
present  in  her  own  warm  country,  her  young  country, 
beauty  was  lacking. 

Perhaps  —  here  the  third  subject  came  in  — perhaps 
even  in  the  trouble  that  she  felt  threatened  them,  there 
were  elements  that  might  be  alchemized.  She  was 
willing,  at  least,  to  attempt  to  find  gold,  to  transform 
what  she  had  thought  was  common  into  the  fine  metal. 
Some  alchemy  of  the  sort  had  already  taken  place  before 
her  eyes;  she  no  longer  thought  common  those  little 
pathetic  anxieties  which  she  had  heard  this  morning. 
For  days  and  months  the  same  anxieties,  the  same  care 
had  been  manifest.  There  was  no  day,  no  hour  in 
which  Lady  Osborne  had  not  been  concerned  with  the 
material  comfort  of  those  whom  she  loved.  She  was 
always  wondering  if  her  husband  had  got  his  lunch  at 
the  House,  and  what  they  gave  him;,  whether  the  motor 
had  got  there  in  time,  and  if  he  remembered  to  put  his 
coat  on.  Nor  had  her  care  embraced  him  alone.  One 


290  THEOSBORNES 

day  she  had  come  up  to  Dora's  sitting  room  and  found 
that  there  was  a  draught  round  the  door,  and  so  had 
changed  her  seat.  But  next  day  there  was  a  screen 
placed  correctly.  Or  Claude  had  sneezed  at  dinner, 
and  a  mysterious  phial  had  appeared  on  his  dressing 
table  with  the  legend  that  directed  its  administration. 
He  had  come  in  to  Dora  to  ask  if  she  had  any  explanation 
of  the  bottle.  But  she  had  none  and  they  concluded 
Mrs.  Osborne  had  put  it  there,  fussily  no  doubt,  for  a 
sneeze  was  only  a  sneeze,  but  with  what  loving  intent. 
She  remembered  everything  of  that  sort.  Per  liked 
kidneys:  his  wife  liked  cocoa.  It  was  all  attended 
to.  Martha  was  in  evidence.  But  Mary  was  there. 

Dora's  thoughts  had  strayed  again.  She  had  meant 
to  think  about  the  trouble  that  she  felt  was  threatening, 
and  to  see  if  by  some  alchemy  it  might  be  transformed 
into  a  healing  of  hurt.  She  did  not  believe  that  she 
was  fanciful  in  expecting  bad  news:  she  wished  to 
contemplate  the  effect  of  it,  if  it  came.  Supposing  Lady 
Osborne  was  found  to  be  suffering  from  something 
serious,  how  was  she  herself  to  behave?  She  had  to 
make  things  easier  for  her  father-in-law:  she  had  to 
be  of  some  use.  That  was  not  so  difficult:  a  little 
affection  meant  so  much  to  him.  He  glowed  with  pleasure 
when  she  was  kind.  But  for  Claude?  That  was  more 
difficult.  She  had  to  be  all  to  him.  It  was  much  harder 
there  to  meet  the  needs  she  ought  to  meet,  and  should 
instinctively  meet  without  thought.  Once,  if  she  had 
said,  "Oh,  Claude,"  all  would  have  been  said  be- 
cause the  simple  words  were  a  symbol.  But  now  she 
could  not  say,  "Oh,  Claude"  like  that.  She  could 


THEOSBORNES  291 

be  Martha,  that  was  easy.  But  it  was  not  Martha  who 
was  wanted. 

The  door  from  his  dressing  room  opened,  and  he  came 
in,  shielding  with  his  hand  the  light  of  his  candle,  so 
that  is  should  not  fall  on  her  face.  The  outline  of  his 
fingers  even  to  her  half-shut  eyes  was  drawn  in  luminous 
red,  where  the  light  shone  through  the  flesh.  He  had 
often  come  in  like  that,  fearing  to  awaken  her.  Often 
she  had  been  awake,  as  she  was  now. 

To-night  she  feigned  sleep.  And  she  heard  the  soft 
breath  that  quenched  the  candle;  she  heard  a  whisper 
of  voice  close  to  her,  words  of  one  who  thought  that 
none  heard. 

"Good  night,  my  darling,"  he  said. 


CHAPTER  XI. 

JIM  had  been  engaged  to  spend  this  week-end  with 
a  party,  of  which  it  is  sufficient  to  say  that  though 
it  would  probably  be  amusing,  it  would  not  appear  in 
the  columns  of  the  Morning  Post.  But  on  the  Saturday 
afternoon  he  sent  an  excuse  and  remained  in  town  instead. 
Much  as  he  hated  solitude,  he  had  got  something  to  do 
which  made  solitude  a  necessary  evil.  He  had  got  to 
sit  down  and  think,  and  continue  thinking  till  he  had 
made  up  his  mind.  He  had  to  adopt  a  certain  course 
of  action,  or  by  not  acting  at  all  commit  himself  to  another 
course. 

Claude  had  not  come  back  into  the  room  after  sending 
that  message  by  the  telephone,  and  calling  to  him  the 
farewell  he  had  been  unable  to  answer.  A  few  seconds 
before  only,  when  he  himself  had  come  into  the  room 
and  found  Claude  examining  the  counterfoils  of  his 
cheque-book,  he  had  thought  that  all  was  over,  and  had 
Claude  said  nothing  to  him,  just  looked  at  him,  and 
pointed  with  a  finger  to  the  blank  counterfoil  close  to 
the  end  of  the  book,  Jim  would  have  confessed.  But 
Claude  had  spoken  at  once  those  incredible  words,  and 
the  moment  after  had  confirmed  the  reality  of  them  by 
the  message  to  his  bank.  The  immensity  of  that  relief 
had  taken  away  Jim's  power  of  speech;  had  he  tried  to 
use  his  voice  he  must  have  screamed.  Then  he  heard 
the  door  of  the  flat  shut,  and  the  next  moment  he  was 

292 


THEOSBORNES  293 

rolling  on  the  sofa,  his  face  buried  in  its  cushions,  to 
stifle  his  hysterical  laughter. 

The  incredible  had  happened;  the  impossible  was 
now  part  of  the  sober  history  of  the  month.  The  bank 
had  called  in  question  the  cheque;  evidently  Claude 
had  come  down  here  to  see  whether  he  had  drawn  a 
cheque  of  corresponding  date,  had  found  a  blank  counter- 
foil (not  the  first  in  the  book),  and  had  accepted  that  as 
evidence  that  the  cheque  was  of  his  own  drawing.  The 
possibility  of  a  forgery  never  apparently  occurred  to 
him.  His  vaunted  carelessness  about  money  matters 
was  strikingly  exemplified;  he  had  not  exaggerated  it  in 
the  least.  What  a  blessed  decree  of  Providence  that 
one's  brother-in-law  shall  be  so  rich  and  such  an  idiot! 
Jim  felt  almost  satisfied  with  the  world. 

But  next  moment  with  the  same  suddenness  as  this 
spasm  of  relief  had  come,  it  ceased.  Swift  and  huge  as 
the  genie  of  some  Arabian  tale,  a  doubt  arose.  And 
before  it  fully  developed  itself,  it  was  a  doubt  no  longer, 
but  a  certainty.  For  one  moment  his  relief  had  tricked 
him  into  believing  that  Claude  thought  the  cheque  to 
be  of  his  own  drawing;  the  next,  Jim  could  no  more  delude 
himself  with  that.  Rich  as  Claude  was,  fool  as  he  was, 
it  was  not  possible  that  he  should  believe  himself  to 
have  drawn  five  hundred  pounds  in  cash  but  a  week  ago, 
and  to-day  find  no  trace  of  it,  nor  any  possible  memory 
of  how  he  had  spent  it.  No,  the  cheque  had  been  called 
in  question;  Claude  therefore  must  know  that  forgery  had 
been  committed.  That  was  certain. 

But  he  had  told  his  bankers  that  the  cheque  was 
genuine. 


294  THEOSBORNES 

Jim  got  up  from  the  sofa,  put  the  cushion  in  its  place, 
and  smoothed  it  with  mechanical  precision.  What  did 
this  mean?  Did  he  guess  by  whom  the  forgery  was 
committed  ?  In  a  moment  Jim  felt  injured  and  indignant 
at  the  idea  of  such  a  possibility  crossing  Claude's  mind. 
He  had  never  given  him  the  shadow  of  ground  for  think- 
ing that  such  a  thing  as  forgery  was  possible  to  him. 
It  was  an  insult  of  the  grossest  kind,  if  such  a  notion 
had  ever  presented  itself  to  him.  But  Claude  was  of  a 
suspicious  nature;  once  before,  Jim  remembered,  Dora 
had  talked  some  nonsense  about  Jim's  having  cheated  at 
croquet,  and  Claude  had  said  that  he  was  satisfied  that 
this  was  not  the  case,  when  Jim  told  him  it  was  not.  He 
won  a  sovereign  over  that  silly  game  of  croquet. 

But  it  was  monstrous  —  if  true  —  that  Claude  should 
suspect  him  of  this.  It  was  impossible  for  any  self- 
respecting  person,  however  unworthy  of  self-respect,  to 
stop  in  his  rooms,  accept  his  hospitality,  until  he  had 
made  sure  that  such  an  idea  had  never  crossed  Claude's 
mind.  His  sense  of  injury  bordered  upon  the  virtuous. 
And  then,  with  disconcerting  rapidity,  sense  of  injury 
and  virtue  all  vanished.  He  could  not  keep  it  up.  He 
saw  through  himself. 

Once  more  his  mind  went  back  to  the  rapturous  pos- 
sibility that  had  caused  him  to  bury  his  face  in  the  sofa- 
cushion.  Was  there  any  chance  of  Claude's  believing 
that  the  cheque  was  genuine?  But  already  the  question 
did  not  need  an  answer.  That  possibility  was  out  of 
sight,  below  the  horizon,  and  he  was  here  alone,  swim- 
ming, drowning. 

That  Claude  knew  forgery  had  been  committed  was 


THEOSBORNES  295 

certain  then,  and  for  some  reason  he  shielded  the  forger. 
Either  he  suspected  Jim  (the  sense  of  injury  and  virtue 
did  not  make  themselves  felt  now),  or  he  did  not.  If  he 
did  not,  good.  If  he  did,  well,  good  also,  since  he  shielded 
him. 

Quick-witted  and  mentally  nimble  as  he  was,  Jim 
took  a  little  while  to  realize  that  situation.  In  the  normal 
course  of  life  he  would  necessarily  meet  Claude  often, 
and  he  could  not  see  himself  doing  so.  He  could  not 
see  how  social  intercourse  was  any  more  possible.  Or 
would  Claude  avoid  such  intercourse,  manage  somehow 
that  they  should  not  meet  ?  That  might  be  managed  for 
a  time,  but  not  permanently.  Dora  would  ask  him  to 
dine,  or  Lady  Osborne  would  ask  him  to  stay,  and  either 
he  or  Claude  would  always  have  to  frame  excuses.  Yet 
Claude's  words  of  farewell  to  him  had  been  quite  normal 
and  cordial.  There  was  nothing  there  that  anticipated 
unpleasantness  or  estrangement  in  the  future.  Perhaps 
Claude  harboured  no  suspicion  against  him.  Then 
whom  did  he  shield  ?  There  was  only  one  person,  him- 
self, who  could  have  done  this,  whom  there  could  be 
sufficient  motive  for  shielding. 

And  then  suddenly  his  own  dislike  of  his  brother-in- 
law  flared  up  into  hatred,  the  hatred  of  the  injurer  for 
the  injured,  which  is  one  of  the  few  things  in  this  world 
that  are  pure  black,  and  have  no  ray  of  reflection  of  any- 
thing good,  however  inverted  and  distorted,  in  them. 
And  he  was  living  in  the  rooms,  eating  the  food,  drinking 
the  wine  of  the  man  whom  he  hated.  That  Claude  had 
loaded  him  with  benefits  made,  as  once  before,  his  offence 
the  greater.  And  he  was  in  Claude's  power;  at  any 


296  THEOSBORNES 

moment,  even  if  he  did  not  suspect  Jim  now  of  having 
done  this,  he  had  but  to  send  a  further  message  to  the 
bank,  saying  that  their  suspicion  was  correct,  and  he 
had  not  drawn  the  cheque,  and  he  would  suspect  no 
further,  for  he  would  know. 

The  hot  hours  of  the  sunny  afternoon  went  by,  not 
slowly  at  all,  but  with  unusual  speed,  though  he  passed 
them  doing  nothing,  but  occasionally  walking  up  and 
down  the  room.  He  had  told  Parker  when  he  sent 
his  telegram  of  excuse  about  the  river  party  that  he 
would  dine  at  home  and  alone,  and  it  was  a  matter  for 
surprise  when  he  was  told  that  dinner  was  ready.  And 
after  dinner  he  sat  again  in  the  room  where  this  morning 
he  had  found  Claude  with  his  cheque-book,  as  far  from 
his  decision  as  ever.  But  about  one  thing  he  had  made 
up  his  mind;  he  believed  Claude  knew,  or  at  any  rate, 
suspected  who  had  done  this.  There  was  no  other 
explanation  that  could  account  at  all  reasonably  for  his 
shielding  the  culprit.  It  was  no  time  to  invent  Utopian 
explanations  (and  even  they  would  be  elusive  to  the 
seeker) ;  Jim  wanted  to  see  the  things  that  were  actually 
the  case  on  this  evening. 

What  was  to  be  done?  What  was  to  be  done?  He 
could  not  tell  Claude  that  his  suspicions  were  grossly 
and  gratuitously  insulting,  for  Claude  had  expressed 
none;  he  had  said  there  was  nothing  to  suspect,  no 
ground  for  suspicion.  Nor  did  Jim  see  that  it  was 
possible  to  continue  seeing  Claude,  feeling  that  he  was  in 
his  hands,  that  at  any  moment  he  might  disown  the 
cheque,  and  let  the  bank  pursue  the  usual  course.  Claude 
had  been  generous,  quixotically  generous  that  morning; 


THEOSBORNES  297 

but  who  knew  whether  that  might  not  only  be  a  momen- 
tary impulse,  or  even  a  move  merely  to  gain  time,  to  con- 
sider? It  was  a  serious  step  to  let  one's  wife's  brother 
be  prosecuted.  But  very  likely  he  had  only  done  it  to 
stay  immediate  proceedings:  very  likely  he  wanted  to 
talk  it  over  with  Dora  first.  .  .  .  And  at  that  thought 
the  breaking  point  came.  Through  these  solitary  hours 
Jim  had  faced  a  good  deal,  and  the  fibres  of  endurance 
were  weakened.  And  he  could  not  face  that.  Anything 
was  more  tolerable  than  the  picture  of  Dora  being  told. 

Generous!  That  word  had  occurred  in  his  thoughts, 
and  it  had  been  applied  by  him  to  Claude.  It  was  no 
less  than  his  due;  he  had  always  been  generous.  His 
generosity  had  not  cost  him  much,  had  not  entailed  self- 
denial,  but  it  had  been  there,  it  had  been  given.  First 
in  very  little  ways,  as  when  he  gave  Jim  free  living  at  the 
flat;  then  in  larger  ways,  when  for  the  sake  of  Dora  he 
imputed  mere  carelessness  to  himself  instead  of  letting 
crime  be  brought  home  to  another.  The  price  of  his 
generosity  concerned  nobody.  And  Jim  was  beaten. 
The  worst  of  him  surrendered  to  something  a  little  better 
than  the  worst.  The  surrender  was  not  nobly  made; 
it  was  made  from  necessity,  because  every  other  course 
was  a  little  more  impossible  than  that.  Claude  had  to 
be  told.  He  knew  that  he  was  in  Claude's  hands  already; 
the  most  he  could  do  and  the  least  was  to  seem  to  put  him- 
self there.  And  then  suddenly  he  felt  so  tired  that  thought 
was  no  longer  possible,  and  he  fell  asleep  where  he  sat. 

It  was  deep  in  the  night  when  he  woke,  for  the  noise 
of  traffic  had  almost  sunk  to  silence,  but  from  the  dream- 


298  THEOSBORNES 

lessness  of  exhausted  sleep  he  passed  straight  into  full 
consciousness  again,  and  took  up  the  tragic  train  of 
thought  where  he  had  left  it.  He  did  not  reconsider 
his  decision  —  it  was  cut  in  steel  —  nor  did  he  desire 
to,  for  to  wish  for  the  impossible  requires  the  strong 
spring  of  hope,  and  of  hope  he  had  none.  He  was  beaten ; 
he  resigned.  And  then  on  the  outer  darkness  there  shone 
a  little  ray.  Claude,  whom  a  few  hours  ago  he  had 
hated  with  the  rancour  of  the  injurer,  had  been  generous, 
appallingly  generous.  Was  there  nothing  he  could  do 
for  Claude? 

Yes;  one  thing,  the  hardest  of  all,  the  utmost.  For 
weeks  he  knew  things  had  not  gone  well  with  him  and 
Dora.  He  got  on  her  nerves,  his  vulgarities  (as  was 
most  natural)  irritated  her,  and  she  could  no  longer  see 
in  him  anything  but  them.  But  there  was  more  in 
Claude  than  that.  She  did  not  know  it,  but  he  might 
tell  her.  Perhaps  if  she  knew,  she  would  see,  would 
understand.  ...  Or  had  Claude  already  told  her? 
That  had  seemed  possible  before,  a  thing  easily  pictured. 
But  he  did  not  think  it  likely  now.  It  was  not  consistent 
with  what  Claude  had  already  done.  For  it  must  have 
been  for  his  wife's  sake  that  he  had  acted  thus. 

A  little  while  before  it  had  seemed  to  Jim  the  worst 
possible  thing,  the  one  unbearable  thing,  that  Dora 
should  know.  But  looked  at  from  this  new  standpoint  it 
was  different.  If  Claude  told  her,  it  was  one  thing;  it 
was  another  if  he  did.  If  he  did,  if  he  could,  it  might 
help  Dora  to  see  that  there  was  something  in  Claude 
beyond  his  commonness.  And  —  Jim  was  a  long  time 
coming  to  it  —  it  might  in  some  degree  atone,  not  in 


THEOSBORNES  299 

Claude's  eyes,  for  he  would  not  tell  Claude  what  he  meant 
to  do,  but  in  —  in  those  eyes  which  look  on  all  evil  things 
and  all  good  things,  and  see  the  difference  between 
them. 

There  were  a  few  arrangements  to  be  made  on  Sunday, 
but  he  made  them  without  flinching.  Claude  and  Dora 
were  at  Grote,  and  a  line  to  Claude  there,  asking  to  see 
him  as  soon  as  possible  on  Monday,  and  a  line  to  Dora 
at  Park  Lane,  saying  that  he  wanted  to  see  her  alone  in 
the  afternoon,  was  all  that  was  necessary.  It  was  better 
to  take  those  interviews  in  that  order  —  he  could  not 
help  being  clever  over  it  —  for  it  was  easier  to  face  Dora, 
when  able  to  tell  her  that  he  had  already  confessed  to 
Claude.  What  he  had  to  say  would  come  with  more 
force  thus.  She  would  see  that  for  the  sake  of  helping 
Claude  and  her,  he  had  done  something  that  could  not 
have  been  easy. 

All  that  day  down  at  Grote  they  waited  for  news  from 
Sir  Henry,  but  none  came.  Lord  Osborne,  always  opti- 
mistic, saw  the  most  hopeful  significance  in  his  silence. 

"Depend  upon  it,  my  dear,"  he  said  to  Dora  as  she 
went  to  bed  that  night,  "depend  upon  it  Sir  Henry  has 
seen  my  lady  again,  and  has  quite  forgotten  that  we 
might  be  in  some  anxiety,  because,  as  he  knows  now, 
forgetting  he  ain't  told  us,  there's  nought  to  be  anxious 
about.  That's  like  those  busy  men  — Lord,  my  dear! 
fancy  passing  your  life  in  other  people's  insides,  so  to 
speak  —  why  it  would  make  you  forget  your  own  name. 
But  if  there  had  been  any  cause  for  us  to  worry,  depend 
upon  it  he'd  have  let  us  know.  I  bet  I  shall  be  making 


3oo  THEOSBORNES 

a  joke  of  my  lady's  ailments  before  I'm  twenty-four 
hours  older.  I'll  be  getting  a  few  ready  for  her  as  I  do 
my  undressing  to-night.  And  it's  me  as  is  cheering  you 
up,  my  dear,  this  moment.  You  go  to  sleep  quiet,  or 
else  I'll  tell  Mrs.  O.  that  you've  given  me  such  an  uncom- 
fortable Sunday  as  I've  not  had  since  first  we  was 
married." 

Then  came  Monday  morning.  Dora  had  her  early 
post  brought  up  to  her  bedroom,  but  since  she  had 
received  Saturday  posts  forwarded  from  town  yesterday, 
there  was  nothing  sent  on.  In  fact,  there  was  only  one 
letter  for  her  directed  to  her  here.  And  she  opened  it 
and  read  it. 

Claude  had  already  left  by  an  early  train  when  she 
got  down.  She  did  not  expect  this,  since,  as  far  as  she 
knew,  he  had  no  engagements  that  morning  and  had 
intended  not  to  leave  till  a  later  train,  but  he  had  gone. 
Lord  Osborne  and  she  were  going  to  lunch  in  the  country 
and  drive  back  afterward,  but  after  breakfast,  when 
the  last  guests  had  gone,  she  went  to  him.  He  was  in  the 
room  he  called  the  "lib'ry"  and  was  reading  the  Morning 
Post. 

"See  here,  my  dear,"  he  said,  "and  think  how  we're 
all  at  the  mercy  of  the  press.  There's  my  lady  giving 
a  little  party  this  evening,  and  I'm  blest  if  they  don't 
know  all  about  it  already.  Listen  here:  'Lady  Osborne 
has  a  small  party  to-night  to  meet ' ' 

"Ah,  don't,"  said  Dora,  not  meaning  to  speak,  but 
knowing  she  had  to. 

Instantly  the  paper  fell  to  the  ground. 


THEOSBORNES  301 

"What  is  it,  my  dear?"  he  said. 

"I  have  heard  from  Sir  Henry,"  she  said. 

She  gave  him  a  moment  for  that;  then  she  went  on 

"Dad,  dear,"  she  said,  "there  is  trouble.    He  saw  her 
again  yesterday,  and  has  written  to  me  about  it.    There 
is  something  wrong.    He  does  not  know  for  certain 
what  it  is,  but  they  will  have  to  find  out.    Oh,  it  is  no  use 
my  hinting  at  it.     You've  got  to  know." 

"Yes,  my  dear,  yes,"  said  he. 

"They  have  got  to  operate.  It  may  be  very  bad 
indeed.  They  can't  tell  yet.  They  don't  know  till  they 
see." 

Dora  drew  a  long  breath. 

"It  may  be  cancer,"  she  said,  and  by  instinct  she  put 
her  hand  over  her  eyes,  so  that  she  should  not  see  him. 

"  Mrs.  O.  ?"  he  said  very  quietly. 

Dora  heard  the  buzzing  of  honey-questing  bees  in  the 
flower-border  outside  the  window,  the  clicking  of  a 
mowing  machine  on  the  lawn,  and  from  close  beside  her 
the  slow  breathing  of  Lord  Osborne.  Without  looking 
at  him,  she  knew  that  he  had  pursed  up  his  lips,  almost 
as  if  whistling,  a  habit  of  his  in  perplexed  moments.  He 
had  been  smoking  a  cigar  when  she  came  in,  and  she 
heard  him  lay  this  down  on  a  tray  by  his  elbow.  And 
then  he  spoke. 

"Well,  my  dear,"  he  said,  "we've  all  got  to  help  her 
bear  it,  whatever  it  is." 

Dora  found  it  impossible  to  speak  for  a  moment.  She 
could  have  given  him  sympathy  had  there  been  any- 
thing in  his  words  that  suggested  it  was  wanted.  She 
could  have  told  him  that  they  must  hope  for  the  best, 


302  THEOSBORNES 

that  the  worst  was  by  no  means  certain  yet;  there  were 
a  hundred  quite  suitable  things  to  say,  if  only  he  had 
appeared  to  need  them  in  the  least.  But  quite  clearly, 
he  did  not;  he  did  not  happen  to  be  thinking  about 
himself  at  all  or  to  want  any  consolation.  And  in  face  of 
this  simplicity,  she  was  dumb.  It  was  perfect:  there 
was  nothing  to  be  said  except  give  the  sign  of  assent. 

"And,  my  dear,  if  you'll  order  the  motor  round  at 
once,  I'll  put  a  few  papers  together,  as  I  must  take  up 
with  me,  and  then  I  think  I'll  be  off.  And  what'll  you 
do,  my  dear?  Hadn't  you  better  stop  as  planned  and 
have  your  morning  in  the  country?  Not  but  what  I 
should  dearly  like  to  have  you  by  my  side." 

"Ah,  Dad!"  said  she,  and  kissed  him. 

He  smiled  at  her,  holding  her  hand  tight  a  moment. 

"We've  got  to  keep  our  pecker  up,  my  dear,"  he  said, 
"so  as  to  help  her  keep  hers.  She'll  be  brave  enough 
when  she  sees  we're  brave,  God  bless  her!  And  brave 
we  are  and  will  be,  my  dearie.  We'd  scorn  to  be  cowards. 
And  I'm  glad  we  didn't  know  this  till  this  morning,  for 
she'll  be  pleased  to  hear  as  we  had  such  a  pleasant 
Sunday." 

"Yes,  she  could  think  of  nothing  else  when  she  talked 
to  me  on  Saturday,"  said  Dora. 

What  little  more  there  was  to  be  told  she  told  him  on 
their  way  up,  but  otherwise  their  drive  was  rather  silent. 
Once  or  twice  he  leaned  out  of  the  window  and  spoke 
to  the  chauffeur. 

"You  can  get  along  a  bit  quicker  here,"  he  said. 
"There's  an  empty  road." 

Then  he  turned  to  Dora. 


THEOSBORNES  303 

"If  you  don't  mind  going  a  bit  above  the  average, 

my  dear?"  he  asked.     "'Twould  be  a  good  thing,  too, 

if  we  got  home  before  Claude,  and  it's  but  a  slow  train 

he'll  have  caught." 

And  once  again  as  they  crossed  the  great  heathery 
upland  of  Ashdown  Forest,  redolent  with  gorse  and 
basking  in  the  sun:  "Seems  strange  on  a  beautiful  day 
like  this!"  he  said.  "But  there!  who  knows  but  that 
we  shan't  have  some  pleasant  weather  yet?" 

Claude,  meantime,  getting  Jim's  letter  by  the  same 
post  that  had  brought  his  news  to  Dora,  had  left  by  an 
earlier  train,  in  order  to  see  Jim  as  soon  as  possible.  He 
had  gone  before  Dora  came  down,  and  thus  heard  noth- 
ing of  Sir  Henry's  letter,  and  though  he  was  anxious  to 
know,  as  soon  as  he  got  to  town,  how  his  mother  was, 
he  determined  to  go  to  the  flat  on  his  way  to  Park  Lane. 
That  would  not  take  long,  whatever  it  might  be  that  Jim 
wished  to  tell  him;  a  few  minutes,  he  imagined,  would 
suffice. 

All  the  way  up  he  pondered  over  it,  but  think  as  he 
might,  he  could  find  only  one  explanation  of  Jim's  request, 
and  that  was  that  he  was  going  to  confess.  That  was  the 
best  thing  that  could  happen,  and  as  far  as  he  could  see 
it  was  the  only  thing.  But  the  thought  of  his  own  part 
embarrassed  him  horribly:  he  had  no  liking  for  his 
brother-in-law,  and  guessed  that  on  Jim's  side  there  was 
a  similar  barrenness  of  affection.  All  this  would  make 
the  interview  difficult  and  painful:  he  could  forgive  him 
easily  and  willingly,  but  instinctively  he  felt  how  chilly 
a  thing  forgiveness  is,  if  there  is  no  warmth  of  feeling 


3o4  THEOSBORNES 

behind  to  vitalize  it.  But  when  first  he  suspected  that 
Jim  had  done  this,  he  felt  sorry  for  him;  if  it  turned  out 
that  he  was  going  to  confess,  his  pity  was  certainly  not 
diminished. 

On  the  threshold  he  paused:  his  repugnance  for  what 
lay  before  him  was  almost  invincible,  and  all  his  ponder- 
ing had  led  to  nothing  practical:  he  was  still  absolutely 
without  idea  as  to  what  he  should  say  himself.  But  the 
thing  had  to  be  done;  waiting  made  it  no  easier,  and  he 
went  in.  He  would  have  to  trust  to  the  promptings  of 
the  moment:  all  he  was  sure  of  was  that  he  did  not  feel 
unkind,  but  only  sorry.  So  —  had  he  known  it  —  he 
need  not  have  been  so  very  uncomfortable. 

Jim  was  standing  in  the  window,  looking  out  on  to  the 
street.  He  turned  as  Claude  came  in,  but  said  nothing. 
Something  had  to  be  done,  and  Claude  spoke. 

"You  asked  me  to  come  and  see  you,"  he  said.  "So 
I  came  up  as  early  as  I  could.  Oh,  good  morning,  Jim!" 

He  looked  up,  and  saw  that  Jim  did  not  speak  because 
he  could  not.  His  face  was  horribly  white,  and  his  lips 
were  twitching.  And  at  the  sight  of  him,  helpless,  andr 
whatever  he  had  done,  suffering  horribly,  a  far  greater 
warmth  of  pity  came  over  Claude  than  he  had  felt  hitherto. 
All  his  kindness  was  challenged.  And  the  prompting  of 
the  moment  was  not  a  mistaken  one. 

"Oh,  I  say,  old  chap,"  he  said,  and  stopped  short. 

For  Jim  broke.  During  all  those  two  hideous  days 
he  had  nerved  himself  up  to  encounter  abuse,  disgust, 
any  form  of  righteous  wrath  and  contempt.  He  knew 
well  that  Claude  had  spared  him  not  for  his  own  sake, 


THEOSBORNES  305 

but  for  Dora's,  and  in  this  confession  he  was  going  to 
make,  he  was  prepared  to  be  treated  as  he  deserved, 
though  Claude  had  spared  him  public  disgrace.  But 
what  he  had  not  nerved  himself  up  to  encounter  was 
kindness,  such  as  that  which  rang  in  those  few  words. 
And  once  more,  but  now  not  with  hysterical  laughter, 
but  with  the  weeping  of  exhaustion  and  shame  and 
misery,  he  buried  his  head  in  that  same  sofa  cushion. 

Claude  felt  helpless,  awkward,  brutal.  But  it  was  no 
use  doing  anything  yet:  there  was  no  reaching  Jim  till 
that  violence  had  abated,  and  he  sat  there  waiting,  just 
crossing  over  once  to  the  door,  and  bolting  it  for  fear 
Parker  should  come  in.  And  at  lengeh  he  laid  his  hand 
on  Jim's  shoulder. 

"It's  knocked  you  about  awfully,"  he  said.  "I  can 
see  that,  I'm  awfully  sorry.  You  must  have  had  a 
hellish  two  days.  You  needn't  tell  me,  you  know." 

Jim  pulled  himself  together,  and  raised  his  head. 

"  That's  just  what  I  must  do,"  he  said.  "  I  forged  your 
cheque." 

"Well,  well,"  said  Claude. 

But  Jim  had  got  the  thing  said,  and  now  he  went  on 
with  suppressed  and  bitter  vehemence. 

"I've  always  been  a  swindler,  I  think,"  he  said.  "I'm 
rotten:  that's  what  the  matter  with  me.  I've  cheated 
all  my  life.  I  can't  even  play  games  without  cheating. 
I  cheated  you  at  croquet  once,  and  won  a  sovereign. 

Dora  saw." 

Again  Claude's  instinct,  not  his  reason,  prompted  hin 
and  not  amiss.    It  only  told  him  he  was  sorry  for  Jim,  and 
could  a  little  reassure  him  over  this. 


3o6  THEOSBORNES 

"But  she  didn't  know  we  were  playing  for  money," 
said  he  quickly.  "In  fact,  I  told  her  we  were  not." 

"So  it's  twice  that  you  have  spared  me.  Her,  rather," 
said  Jim. 

Claude  accepted  the  correction.  It  was  an  obvious 
one  to  him  no  less  than  to  Jim. 

"Yes:  she'd  have  been  awfully  cut  up  if  she  had 
known,"  he  said  simply. 

Jim  got  up. 

"I  wonder  if  you  can  believe  I  am  sorry?"  he  said. 
"I  am.  My  God,  I've  touched  bottom  now." 

"Why,  yes,  of  course  I  believe  it,"  said  Claude.  "It's 
broken  you  up,  I  can  see  that.  Fellows  don't  break 
unless  they  are  sorry.  But  as  for  the  thing  itself,  if  you 
don't  mind  my  saying  it,  I  think  all  cheating  is  touching 
bottom.  It's  a  rotten  game.  You  know  that  now, 
though.  And  if  you  can  believe  me,  I'm  awfully  sorry 
too.  It's  a  wretched  thing  to  happen.  But  I'm  so  glad 
you  told  me:  it  makes  an  awful  difference,  that." 

Jim  was  silent  a  moment. 

"I  want  to  ask  you  something,"  he  said  at  length. 
"When  did  you  first  suspect  me?  Was  it  when  I  came 
in  and  found  you  here  on  Saturday?" 

Claude  bit  his  lip:  he  did  not  at  all  like  answering 
this. 

"No,  before  that,"  he  said.  "At  least  I  was  afraid  it 
was  you  as  soon  —  as  soon  as  I  found  I  had  left  a  cheque- 
book here.  I'm  sorry,  but  as  you  ask  me,  there  it 
is." 

"From  your  previous  knowledge  of  me?"  asked  Jim 
quietly. 


THEOSBORNES  307 

"Well,  yes,  I  suppose  so,  though  you  make  me  feel  a 
brute.  I  say,  I  don't  think  it's  any  good  going  back  on 
that,  either  for  your  sake  or  mine." 

"Yes  it  is:  it  hurts,  that's  why  it's  good." 

Claude  shifted  his  place  on  the  sofa  a  shade  nearer 
Jim,  and  again  laid  his  hand  on  his  shoulder. 

"  Well,  I  think  you've  been  hurt  enough  for  the  present," 
he  said.  "I  don't  like  seeing  it.  You've  had  as  much 
as  you  can  stand  just  now." 

Jim  shook  his  head. 

" There's  another  thing,  too,"  he  said.  "I'm  absolutely 
cleaned  out,  and  I  can't  repay  you  till  next  quarter." 

Claude  considered  this.  It  was  perfectly  cheap  and 
easy  to  say  that  he  need  not  think  of  paying  at  all,  but 
his  judgment  gave  him  something  better  to  say  than 
that. 

"Well,  we'll  wait  till  then,"  he  said.  "I  don't  want 
to  be  unreasonable." 

Again  Jim's  lip  quivered,  and  Claude  seeing  that  rose 
to  go. 

"  Well,  I  must  get  back,"  he  said.  "  I  want  to  hear  how 
the  mater  is.  She  hasn't  been  well,  and  Sir  Henry  Franks 
saw  her  on  Saturday,  and  again  yesterday.  Look  round 
after  lunch,  will  you  ?  I  don't  think  Dora  and  the 
governor  get  back  till  then.  And  you'll  come  on  to  the 
musical  show  this  evening  ?  There'll  be  some  good  sing- 
ing. Right,  oh!" 

But  still  Jim  could  not  speak,  and  there  was  silence 
again.  Then  Claude  spoke  quickly,  finally. 

"Buck  up,  old  chap,"  he  said,  and  went  straight  to  the 
door  without  looking  back. 


3o8  THEOSBORNES 

He  let  himself  out,  and  went  for  a  turn  up  and  down 
the  street  before  going  to  Park  Lane.  He  had  been  a 
good  deal  moved,  for,  kind-hearted  to  the  core,  it  was 
dreadful  to  him  to  see,  as  he  expressed  it,  "a  fellow  so 
awfully  down  in  his  luck."  And  he  was  conscious  of 
another  thing  that  struck  him  as  curious.  He  had  liked 
Jim  during  those  few  minutes  he  had  seen  him  to-day,  a 
thing  he  had  never  done  before,  and  he  wished  he  could 
have  made  things  easier  for  him,  which  again  was  a  new 
sensation,  for  all  that  he  had  ever  done  for  his  brother-in- 
law  he  had  done,  frankly,  for  Dora's  sake.  But  he 
could  not  see  how  to  make  this  easier:  it  was  no  use  telling 
him  that  cheating  was  a  thing  of  no  importance;  it  was 
no  use  telling  him  he  need  not  pay  back  what  he  owed. 
That  was  not  the  way  to  make  the  best  of  this  very  bad 
job.  Of  course,  Jim  must  feel  miserable;  it  wrould  be  a 
thing  to  sicken  at  if  he  did  not.  Luckily,  however,  there 
was  no  doubting  the  sincerity  of  his  wretchedness.  And 
yet  the  boyish  sort  of  advice  implied  by  the  "buck  up" 
was  in  place,  too.  But  he  felt  vaguely  that  he  could  have 
done  much  better  than  he  had  done:  in  that,  had  he 
known  it,  he  would  have  found  that  Jim  disagreed  with 
him. 

He  was  told  to  his  surprise,  by  the  servant  who  let  him 
in,  that  Dora  and  his  father  had  arrived  a  few  minutes 
ago,  and  that  Dora  wished  to  see  him  as  soon  as  he  came 
in.  Accordingly  he  went  straight  to  her  room. 

"Oh,  Claude!"  she  said,  "you  have  come.  We  didn't 
know  where  you  were.  I  had  no  idea  you  had  left  Grote 
till  I  came  down  to  breakfast." 


THEOSBORNES  309 

There  was  trouble  in  her  voice,  and  he  noticed  it, 
wondering  if  by  any  chance  it  had  something  to  do  with 
the  trouble  he  had  seen  already  that  day.  But  clearly  it 
could  not. 

"What  is  it?"  he  said  quickly. 

"Your  mother,"  she  said,  for  it  was  no  use  attempting 
to  break  things.  "Sir  Henry  saw  her  again  yesterday. 
There  has  to  be  an  operation.  There  is  some  growth. 
They  can't  tell  what  it  is  for  certain  until  they  operate. 
Dad  is  going  to  see  her  now.  They  have  settled  it  is  best 
for  him  to  tell  her.  Of  course  he  won't  tell  her  what  the 
fear  is.  Oh  Claude!  I  am  so  sorry;  it  is  so  dreadful." 

"How  does  the  governor  take  it?"  asked  Claude. 

"Exactly  as  you  would  expect." 

"But  it  will  be  awful  for  him  telling  her,"  said  he.  "I 
had  much  better.  Per  or  I,  anyhow.  It'll  tear  his 
heart  out." 

"He  won't  let  you.  When  Sir  Henry  spoke  of  telling 
her,  he  said  at  once.  'That's  for  me  to  do.'  And  then 
he  went  away  to  have  a  few  minutes  alone  before  going 
to  her." 

A  tap  came  at  the  door:  Lord  Osborne  always  tapped 
before  he  entered  Dora's  room.  It  was  her  bit  of  a  flat, 
he  called  it,  and  his  tap  was  ringing  the  bell,  and  asking 
if  she  was  in. 

"Well,  Claude,  my  lad,"  he  said,  "Dora  will  have  told 
you.  We've  all  got  to  keep  up  a  brave  heart,  for  your 
mother's  sake." 

Claude  kissed  his  father,  and  somehow  that  went  to 
Dora's  heart.  He  had  once  said  to  her  that  kissing  seemed 
"pretty  meaningless"  when  she  was  not  concerned. 


3io  THEOSBORNES 

"Yes,  Dad,"  said  he.     "That  we  will." 

"That's  right,  my  boy.  And  that  blessed  girl  of  yours 
has  been  so  good  to  me,  such  as  never  was,  and  if  she'll 
give  her  Dad  a  kiss,  too,  why  there  we  are,  and  thank  you, 
my  dear.  Now  I'm  going  to  see  mother  and  tell  her,  and 
I  daresay  she'll  like  to  see  you  both  some  time  to-day, 
though  if  she  doesn't,  why  you'll  both  understand,  won't 
you  ?  They've  fixed  it  for  to-morrow,  if  she's  agreeable." 

"Dad,  do  let  me  do  that  for  you?"  said  Claude.  "It's 
better  for  me  to  tell  her." 

"No,  my  lad,  that's  for  your  father  and  no  other," 
said  he,  "though  it's  like  you  to  suggest  it,  and  thank  you, 
my  boy.  I'll  come  straight  back  to  you,  my  dears,  and 
tell  you  how  all  goes,  and  how  she  takes  it,  and  pray  try 
to  quiet  Mrs.  Per.  She's  carrying  on  so  silly,  wringing  her 
hands  and  asking,  'Is  she  better?  Is  she  better?'  And 
telling  me  to  bear  up  and  all,  as  if  I  didn't  know  that, 
small  thanks  to  her!  Per  takes  her  back  to  Sheffield 
this  afternoon,  thank  the  Lord,  and  may  I  be  pardoned 
for  that  speech,  but  it's  how  I  feel  with  her  ridiculous 
ways.  ' 

He  went  straight  to  his  wife's  room,  and  was  admitted 
by  the  nurse.  Lady  Osborne  was  in  bed,  of  course,  but 
smiled  to  him  with  neither  more  nor  less  than  her  usual 
cheerfulness. 

"Well,  and  there's  my  Eddie,"  she  said.  "And  I 
hope  you've  had  a  pleasant  Sunday,  my  dear,  as  I'm  sure 
you  must  have,  with  such  pleasant  company  as  came 
down  to  see  you.  I  tell  you  I'm  feeling  a  regular  fraud  this 
morning,  for  what  with  lying  in  bed  and  the  medicine 
Sir  Henry  gave  me,  which  took  the  pain  away  beautiful, 


THE    OSBORNES  311 

I  feel  ever  so  much  better.  Now  sit  you  down,  Mr.  O., 
and  have  a  chat.  Are  you  comfortable  in  that  chair,  my 
dear?" 

"That  I  am,  specially  since  I  know  you're  feeling  easier 
and  more  like  yourself,  mother,"  he  said.  "And  before 
long,  please  God,  we'll  have  you  looking  after  us  all 
again." 

His  wife  was  silent  a  moment.    Then  she  spoke. 

"Eddie,  my  dear,"  she  said,  "Sir  Henry  said  as  how 
you  would  come  and  have  a  talk  with  me,  for  he's  told 
me  nought  himself,  but  just  said,  'You  lie  still  and  don't 
worry,  Mrs.  Osborne,'  for  he  forgets  as  how  you've  been 
honoured.  And  I've  guessed,  my  dear,  that  he  means 
you've  to  tell  me  what's  the  matter  with  me,  and  what 
they're  going  to  do  to  me.  My  dear,  I'll  lie  here  a  year, 
and  take  all  the  medicine  they  choose,  if  only  - 

He  moved  his  chair  a  little  nearer  the  bed:  the  tears 
stood  in  his  eyes,  but  his  mouth  was  firm. 

"I've  come  to  tell  you,  my  dear,"  he  said,  "and  we 
can't  always  be  choosers  to  have  things  the  way  we  wish. 
We've  got  to  submit  to  the  will  of  God,  and  when  them  as 
are  wise  doctors,  like  Sir  Henry,  tells  us  it's  got  to  be  this, 
or  it's  got  to  be  that,  it's  His  will,  my  dear,  no  less  than  the 
doctor's  word.  He's  sent  us  a  sight  of  joy  and  happiness 
and  to-day,  Maria,  he's  sending  us  a  bit  of  trouble,  for  a 
change,  I  may  say.  But  we'll  take  it  thankful,  old  lady, 
same  as  we've  taken  all  them  beautiful  years  that  we've 
had  together.  My  dear,  if  I  could  get  into  bed  there 
instead  of  you,  and  go  through  it  for  you!  But  that's  not 
to  be.  I'll  tell  you  as  quick  as  I  can,  my  dear,  for  there's 
no  use  in  being  silly  and  delaying,  but  " 


3i2  THEOSBORNES 

He  blew  his  nose  violently,  then  left  his  chair,  and 
knelt  down  by  the  bed,  taking  her  hand  in  his.  And  he 
kissed  it. 

"They  don't  quite  know  what's  wrong  with  you, 
dearie,"  he  said,  "and  they've  got  to  see.  You  won't 
feel  nothing;  they'll  give  you  a  whiff  of  chloroform,  and 
you'll  go  off  as  easy  as  getting  to  sleep  of  a  night.  And 
when  you  wake,  they  hope  that  there'll  be  good  news  for 
you,  my  dear,  and  that,  as  I  say,  you'll  soon  be  about 
again,  scolding  and  vexing  us  and  making  our  lives  a 
burden,  as  you've  always  done,  God  bless  you.  There, 
Maria,  I  can  manage  my  joke  still,  and  I'm  mistaken  if 
I  don't  see  you  smiling  at  me,  same  as  ever." 

She  had  smiled,  but  she  grew  grave  again. 

"I  want  to  know  it  all,  Eddie,  my  dear,"  she  said. 
"There's  nothing  you  can  tell  me  as  I  shall  fear  more 
than  what  I  guess.  Do  they  think  it's  the  cancer?" 

"No,  they  don't  say  that,"  he  said.  "But  they've  got 
to  see  what  it  is.  They're  not  going  to  think  anything 
yet,  until  they  see." 

"Thank  you,  dearie,  for  telling  me  so  gentle,"  she 
said.  "I  declare  it's  a  relief  to  me  to  have  it  spoken. 
And  when  is  it  to  be?" 

"They  said  something  about  to-morrow.  But  that's 
as  you  please,  Maria.  But,  my  dear,  there's  no  use  in 
putting  it  off;  better  have  done  with  it." 

"No;  I  wish  as  it  could  have  been  to-day.  But  what  a 
lot  of  trouble  the  inside  is,  as  I  said  to  Dora  on  Saturday. 
Eddie,  my  dear,  I'm  such  a  coward.  You've  all  got  to 
be  brave  for  me;  it's  a  lot  of  worry  I'm  giving.  But  it's 
not  my  fault  as  far  as  I  know;  I've  lived  clean  and  whole- 


THEOSBORNES  313 

seme.  If  s  a  thing  as  is  sent  to  one.  Lor',  my  dear, 
you're  crying.  Now  let's  have  no  sadness  in  this  house; 
it  would  be  shame  on  us  if  we  couldn't  take  our  bit  of 
trouble  like  men  and  women,  instead  of  like  a  pig  as 
squeals  before  you  touch  it.  But  what  an  upset !  There's 
you,  my  dear,  wishing  it  was  you,  and  there's  me,  being 
so  glad  it's  not  you.  We  shan't  agree  about  that,  Mr. 
O.  And  now,  my  dear,  if  you'll  say  a  bit  of  a  prayer,  same 
as  we've  always  said  together  every  morning,  you  and  I, 
before  going  down  to  our  breakfast,  and  then  let's  have 
Dora  and  Claude  in,  and  have  a  bit  of  a  chat.  'Our 
Father,'  my  dear.  We  don't  want  more  than  that;  it's 
what  we've  always  said  together  of  a  morning,  and  it 
hasn't  taken  us  far  wrong  yet." 

There  was  silence  a  little  after  that  was  said,  and  then 
Lord  Osborne  got  up. 

"And  if  I  haven't  forgot  to  kiss  you  'Good  morning,' 
my  dear,"  he  said.  "Well,  that's  that.  And  shall  I 
fetch  Dora  and  Claude  ?  And  what  about  Mrs.  Per  ?  Per's 
out,  I  know.  He  left  early  this  morning  from  Grote  and 
had  business  in  the  City,  which  he  said  would  keep  him 
to  lunch.  Maria,  my  dear,  my  vote's  against  Mrs.  Per." 

"Wouldn't  she  feel  left  out?"  asked  his  wife. 

"Well,  she'd  feel  no  more  than  is  the  case,"  said  he. 
"Give  me  Mrs.  Per,  my  dear,  when  there's  Shakespeare 
or  Chopin  ahead,  but  not  now.  Such  grimaces  as  she's 
been  making  in  the  Italian  room!  You'd  have  thought 
her  face  was  a  bit  of  string,  and  she  trying  to  tie  knots  in 
it!  No,  Mrs.  O.;  I'll  fetch  Dora  and  Claude,  and  that's 
all  you  get  me  to  do.  You  may  ring  the  bell  for  Mrs.  Per, 
but  not  me." 


3i4  THEOSBORNES 

"Well,  perhaps  it  would  be  more  comfortable,"  said 
she,  "without  Lizzie,  if  you're  sure  as  she  won't  feel  she 
should  have  been  sent  for.  I  don't  feel  to  want  any 
antics  to-day." 

He  stood  by  the  bed  a  moment  before  going. 

"I've  never  loved  you  like  to-day,"  he  said. 

"Well,  that's  good  hearing,"  she  said;  "but  you 
repeat  yourself,  Eddie.  I've  heard  you  say  that  before, 
my  dear." 

"And  it  was  always  true,"  said  he. 

The  moment  he  had  left  the  room  she  called  to  the  nurse. 

"Now  make  me  tidy,  nurse,"  she  said,  "and  if  you'd 
smooth  the  bedclothes,  and  a  pillow  more,  my  dear,  would 
make  me  look  a  little  more  brisk-like  and  fit  for  company. 
There's  Lady  Dora  coming,  so  pretty  and  so  sweet  to  me, 
and  my  son  Claude,  her  husband.  My  hair's  all  anyhow, 
so  if  you'd  just  put  a  brush  to  it,  and  there's  a  couple  of 
rings  on  the  dressing  table,  which  I'll  put  on;  handsome, 
aren't  they,  diamonds  and  rubies.  Thank  you,  nurse, 
and  we're  only  just  in  time.  Come  in,  my  dears;  come 
in  and  welcome. 

"Such  a  way  to  receive  you,"  she  said.  "But  there, 
why  apologize,  for  if  I  didn't  always  say  my  bedroom  was 
the  pleasantest  room  in  the  house.  Dora,  my  dearie, 
you've  taken  good  care  of  Mr.  O.,  and  thank  you,  and 
he's  so  pleased  with  you  that  I'm  on  the  way  to  be  jealous. 
You  wait  till  I'm  about  again,  and  see  if  I'don't  cut  you 
out.  Mr.  O.,  do  you  hear  that?  Dora's  got  no  chance 
against  me,  when  I'm  not  a  guy  like  this,  lying  in  my  bed. 
And  you  sit  there,  Dora,  and  Claude  by  you,  as  should  be, 


THE    OSBORNES  315 

and  Mr.  O.  on  the  other  side.  There's  a  nice  comfortable 
party,  what  I  like." 

"What's  this  talk  of  a  guy?"  said  Claude.  "You 
look  famous,  mother." 

"Well,  then,  my  looks  don't  belie  me.  Who  shouldn't 
look  famous  with  her  friends  and  family  coming  to  see 
her  like  this  ?  Dora,  my  dear,  you've  got  to  take  my  place 
to-day,  if  you'd  be  so  kind,  for  there's  the  concert  this 
evening,  and  I  won't  have  it  put  off.  Lor',  I  shall  be 
here,  as  comfortable  as  ever  I  was,  with  my  door  open, 
and  listening,  and  feel  that  I  was  with  you  all,  wearing 
my  new  tiara  and  shaking  hands.  No,  my  dear,  there's 
no  sense  in  putting  it  off.  Such  nonsense!  I've  asked 
our  friends  to  come  and  see  us  this  evening,  and  them  as 
feel  inclined  shall  come,  if  my  word  is  anything.  But 
we'll  be  a  woman  short  at  dinner,  thanks  to  my  silliness. 
I  wonder  if  Lady  Austell  would  be  able  to  come,  for  there's 
the  savoury  of  prawns  as  she  took  twice  of  last  time  she 
dined  with  us.  I  bid  her  to  the  party,  I  know,  but  not 
to  dinner,  I  think.  Claude,  do  you  go  and  telephone  to 
her  now  for  me,  and  you,  Mr.  O.,  go  down  and  help  him; 
and  I'll  chat  to  Dora  the  while." 

There  was  no  mistaking  the  intention  of  this  diplomacy, 
and  the  two  men  left  the  room.  Then  Lady  Osborne 
turned  to  Dora. 

"My  dear,"  she  said,  "you'll  have  heard  all  there  is 
to  know.  And  I  just  want  to  tell  you  that  I'm  facing  it 
O.  K.,  as  Claude  says.  There'll  be  nothing  on  my  part 
to  make  anybody  else  shake  and  tremble.  But  you'll 
have  an  eye  to  your  dad,  dear.  He  feels  it  more  than  me, 
though  God  knows,  I'm  coward  enough  really.  It's  got 


316  THE    OSBORNES 

to  be,  and  though  I  hate  the  thought  of  the  knife  —  well, 
my  dear,  those  as  are  born  into  the  world  and  have  the 
pleasure  of  it  have  to  take  the  troubles  as  well  as  the  joys. 
And  if  they  find  the  worst,  I'm  prepared  for  that,  as  long 
as  I  know  you'll  stick  to  Mr.  O.,  and  help  him.  And 
there's  Claude,  too.  Sometimes  I've  thought  you've  not 
been  so  happy  together  as  I  could  have  wished.  I  don't 
know  what  is  wrong,  but  I've  thought  sometimes  as  all 
isn't  quite  right.  I  wanted  to  say  just  that  to  you;  that 
was  why  I  sent  them  down  together,  so  crafty.  But  he 
loves  you,  my  dear,  and  you  can't  do  more  than  love. 
And  you're  going  to  bear  him  a  child,  please  God.  My 
dear,  that's  the  best  thing  God  ever  thought  of,  if  I  may 
say  so,  for  us  women.  I've  had  two,  bless  them,  and  I 
should  have  liked  to  have  had  a  hundred.  I'd  have 
borne  each  one  with  thanksgiving." 

She  was  silent  a  moment. 

"Claude's  a  kind  lad,"  she  said.  "He  takes  after 
father.  And  he  loves  you,  too.  I'm  not  presuming,  I 
hope,  my  dear.  That's  all  that's  been  on  my  mind,  and 
I  wanted  to  get  it  said.  You'll  forgive  an  old  woman  as 
is  your  boy's  mother.  Thank  you,  my  dear,  for  giving 
me  that  kiss.  I'll  treasure  that.  I'll  think  of  that  when 
they  send  me  off  to  sleep  to-morrow." 

The  others  came  back  at  this  moment  with  the  news 
that  Lady  Austell  would  come  to  dinner. 

"Now  that's  nice  for  your  brother,"  said  Lady  Osborne. 
"He'll  like  to  find  his  mamma  here." 

Dora  had  telephoned  to  Jim  to  say  she  would  come  and 
and  see  him  after  lunch.  Since  receiving  his  note  that 


THE    OSBORNES  317 

morning,  she  had  given  but  little  thought  to  what  he 
might  have  to  say  to  her,  for  these  other  events  banished 
all  else  from  her  mind.  In  spite  of  that  which  lay  before 
them  all,  she  could  hardly  feel  sad,  she  could  hardly  feel 
anxious,  for  the  noble  simplicity  and  serenity  of  the  other 
three  infected  her,  to  the  exclusion  of  all  else,  with  its 
own  peace.  She  had  not  got  to  comfort  anybody,  to 
make  any  effort  herself;  she  was  lifted  off  her  feet  and 
borne  along  in  these  beautiful  shining  waters  of  courage 
and  quietness.  Indeed,  it  seemed  to  her  that  no  one 
was  making  any  effort  at  all ;  she  did  not  find  her  father- 
in-law  sitting  with  his  head  in  his  hands,  and  rousing  him- 
self, when  she  came  in,  to  a  semblance  of  cheerfulness;  she 
did  not  see  Claude  trying  to  suppress  signs  of  emotion. 
They  all  behaved  quite  naturally.  At  first  it  amazed 
her,  for  she  knew,  at  any  rate,  that  there  was  no  lack 
of  love  and  tenderness  in  either  of  them ;  it  seemed  that 
they  must  be  exerting  some  stupendous  control  over 
themselves.  Then  she  saw,  slowly  but  surely,  how  wide 
of  the  mark  such  an  explanation  was.  They  were  exert- 
ing no  control  at  all,  they  behaved  like  that  because  they 
felt  like  that,  because  their  attitude  toward  life  and  death 
and  love  was  serene  and  large  and  quiet.  All  these  months 
it  had  been  there  for  her  to  see,  but,  inexplicably  blind 
as  she  now  felt  she  had  been,  she  had  needed  this  demon- 
stration of  it  before  she  began,  even  faintly,  to  understand. 
It  was  no  wonder,  then,  that  Jim's  affairs  had  been 
obliterated  from  her  mind,  but  now  as  she  entered  that 
flat,  she  wondered  what  he  wanted  that  should  make  him 
wish  to  see  her  in  this  appointed  way.  For  a  moment, 
with  a  sickening  qualm,  she  went  back  to  that  quarter 


3i8  THEOSBORNES 

of  an  hour's  suspense  on  Saturday  morning,  when  she 
had  allowed  herself  to  fear  that  he  was  connected  in  some 
hideous  fashion  with  the  cheque  Claude  could  not  recol- 
lect about.  That  had  haunted  her  afterward,  too,  when 
she  lay  long  awake  at  Grote  on  Saturday  night;  but 
Claude  had  said  so  emphatically  that  the  cheque  was 
all  right,  that  she  felt  her  fear  to  be  fanciful.  Meantime 
Jim  did  not  yet  know  about  Lady  Osborne,  and  as  soon 
as  she  entered  she  told  him. 

"Oh,  Jim!"  she  said,  "we  are  in  trouble.  Lady 
Osborne  has  got  to  have  an  operation.  There  is  some- 
thing wrong,  and  they  want  to  see  what  it  is.  There  is 
a  growth  of  some  sort.  And,  oh,  I  have  been  so  blind, 
so  blind!  They  are  all  behaving  so  splendidly,  and  yet 
behaviour  is  the  wrong  word ;  they  behave  splendidly  just 
because  they  are  splendid.  I  never  guessed  they  were  like 
that.  I'll  tell  you  all  about  it.  But  first,  what  did  you  want 
to  see  me  about  ?  You  don't  look  well,  dear.  What  is  it  ?  " 

"I'm  all  right,"  said  he. 

"  But  what  is  it  ?  "  asked  Dora  again,  vaguely  frightened. 

Jim  leaned  forward,  with  his  elbows  on  his  knees, 
propping  his  head  on  his  hands.  This  was  worse  than  the 
telling  of  Claude  had  been,  but  it  had  to  be  done.  He 
had  promised  some  humble,  sorry  little  denizen  within 
him  that  he  would  do  it. 

"Did  Claude  speak  to  you  about  a  cheque,"  he  asked, 
"which  he  could  not  remember  drawing?" 

"Yes,  and  then  afterward  he  said  it  was  all  right," 
said  she. 

"Then  I've  got  to  tell  you,"  he  said. 

Then  her  fear  seized  her  again  in  full  force. 


THE    OSBORNES  319 

" Don't,  Jim,"  she  cried,  "don't  tell  me  there's  any- 
thing wrong." 

"It's  no  use  beating  about,"  he  said.  "I  forged  that 
cheque  and  cashed  it.  Claude  knows;  I  told  him." 

Dora  sat  still  a  moment.  Then  she  put  her  hands  up 
to  her  head. 

"Open  the  window,"  she  said,  "I  am  stifling." 

He  got  up  and  threw  open  the  window  away  from  the 
street.  Then  he  walked  over  to  the  chimney  piece  and 
leaned  his  elbows  on  it,  with  his  back  to  her. 

At  first  Dora  felt  nothing  but  hard  anger  and  indigna- 
tion, and  she  knew  that  if  she  spoke  at  all  it  would  be  to 
say  something  which  could  do  no  good,  and  perhaps  only 
make  a  breach  between  them  that  could  never  be  healed. 

And  it  was  long  that  she  waited,  it  was  long  before  any 
spark  of  pity  for  him  was  lit.  Then  she  spoke. 

"Oh,  Jim,  what  a  miserable  business!"  she  said. 
"But  why  did  you  tell  me?  Couldn't  you  have  spared 
me  knowing?  Or  perhaps  you  were  afraid  Claude 
would  tell  me." 

"  No ;  I  don't  tell  you  for  that  reason,"  he  said.  "  After  I 
saw  Claude  this  morning,  I  knew  he  would  never  tell  you." 

"Why,  then?" 

"Because  I  want  to  tell  you  about  Claude.  It  may  do 
some  good.  Well,  Claude's  treated  me  in  a  way  that's 
beyond  my  understanding.  He  is  beyond  your  under- 
standing, too,  at  present,  and  that's  why  I  am  telling  you. 
I  wish  you  could  have  been  here  when  I  told  him.  He 
was  only  sorry  for  me.  If  he  was  God,  he  couldn't  have 
been  more  merciful.  And  it  wasn't  put  on.  He  felt  it; 
and  I  wanted,  for  once,  to  see  if  I  couldn't  be  of  some  use." 


320  THEOSBORNES 

He  turned  round  and  faced  her. 

"I  want  you  to  know  what  sort  of  a  fellow  Claude 
really  is,"  he  said.  "I  know  you  don't  get  on  well,  and 
that's  because  you  don't  know  him.  You  judged  him 
first  by  his  face  —  that,  and  perhaps  a  little  bit  by  his 
wealth.  And  then  you  judged  him  by  what  you  and  I 
call  vulgarity  and  want  of  breeding.  That's  not  Claude 
either.  Claude's  the  fellow  who  treated  a  swindler  and 
a  forger  in  the  way  I've  told  you.  He's  got  a  soul  that's 
more  beautiful  than  his  face,  you  know,  and  he's  the 
handsomest  fellow  I  ever  saw.  I  wanted  you  to  get  a 
glimpse  of  it.  It  might  help  things.  That's  all  I've  got 
to  say.  I'm  sorry  for  giving  you  the  pain  of  knowing 
what  I've  done,  but  I  thought  it  might  do  good.  He's 
just  broken  me  up  with  his  goodness.  That's  Claude." 

The  anger  was  quite  gone  now,  and  it  was  a  tremulous 
hand  that  Dora  laid  on  his  shoulder. 

"Oh,  Jim,"  she  said,  "thank  you!  I  am  so  sorry  for 
you,  you  know,  and  I'm  grateful.  I  shall  go  back  and 
tell  Claude  I  know,  and  —  and  thank  him,  and  be  sorry." 

"Yes,  that  is  the  best  thing  you  can  do,"  said  Jim. 

Claude  was  alone  in  their  sitting  room  when  she  got 
back,  and,  as  he  always  did,  he  rose  from  his  chair  as  she 
entered.  For  a  moment  she  stood  looking  at  him,  mute, 
beseeching.  Then  she  came  to  him. 

"Thank  you  about  Jim,  dear,"  she  said.  "He  has 
just  told  me  about  it,  to  make  me  —  make  me  see  what 
you  were.  Oh,  Claude,  I  didn't  know." 

And  then  the  tears  came.  But  his  arm  was  around 
her,  and  her  head  lay  on  his  shoulder. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

UNCLE  ALF  was  seated  with  Dora  on  the  terrace  at 
Grote  one  afternoon  late  in  August.  Dora  herself 
was  hatless  and  cloakless,  for  it  was  a  day  of  windless 
and  summer  heat,  but  Uncle  Alf  had  an  overcoat  on, 
and  a  very  shabby  old  gray  shawl  in  addition  cast  about 
his  shoulders.  His  face  wore  an  expression  of  ludicrous 
malevolence. 

"And  I  had  to  come  out  here,  my  dear,  and  take  refuge 
with  you,"  he  said,  "for  Maria  will  drive  me  off  my  head 
with  talk  of  that  tumour  of  hers.  Why,  she  speaks  as 
if  nobody  had  ever  had  a  tumour  before.  I  said  to  her, 
*  Maria,  if  it  had  been  cancer  now,  and  you'd  got  over  as 
you  have,  it  might  have  been  something  to  make  a  tale 
of.'  But  tumour,  God  bless  me!  and  benignant,  so 
Sir  Henry  said,  at  that." 

Dora  gave  a  little  shriek  of  laughter. 

"Uncle  Alf,  sometimes  I  think  you're  the  unkindest 
man  in  the  whole  world,"  she  said,  "and  even  when 
you're  most  unkind  I  can't  help  laughing.  I  wonder  if 
you  are  unkind  really.  I  don't  expect  so." 

Uncle  Alf  took  no  notice  of  this,  and  went  on  with  his 
grievances. 

"As  for  Eddie,  I'm  sure  I  don't  know  what  to  make 
of  him,"  he  said.  "I  shouldn't  wonder  if  he's  going 
soft-headed,  for  he  was  always  threatened  that  way,  to 
my  thinking.  He  can  talk  of  nothing  but  the  brave  and 

321 


322  THEOSBORNES 

beautiful  Maria.  Lord!  my  dear,  it's  a  wonder  to  me 
that  you  can  stand  it.  Doesn't  it  get  on  your  nerves? 
Doesn't  it  make  you  feel  sick  and  ill  to  hear  how 
they  go  on?" 

Dora  laughed  again. 

"No,  Uncle  Alf,  it  doesn't,  do  you  know?  You  see  I 
was  with  them  through  all  those  dreadful  days  in  the 
summer  after  the  operation,  when  they  still  didn't  know 
what  it  was  for  certain,  and  had  to  make  an  examination, 
and  it  made  a  tremendous  impression  on  me.  I  always 
used  to  think  that  they  all,  including  Claude,  were 
very  ordinary  people.  Well,  they're  not.  They  were 
very  wonderful.  They  were  cheerful,  even  when  they 
were  waiting  for  a  verdict  that  might  have  been  so 
terrible." 

"Bah!"  said  Uncle  Alf. 

"Yes,  if  you  wish.  They  used  to  get  on  my  nerves, 
that  is  quite  true,  and  you  gave  me  a  hint  about  it  once 
which  was  very  useful.  You  told  me  to  see  the  humorous 
side  of  Dad  and  Mother." 

"Lord,  it's  Dad  and  Mother,  is  it?"  said  Alf,  in  a  tone 
of  acid  disgust. 

"Yes,  Dad  and  Mother.  Just  as  you  are  Uncle  Alf, 
but  I'll  call  you  Mr.  Osborne  if  you  prefer.  Very  well, 
then,  I  took  that  hint,  and  sometimes  now  I  laugh  at  them, 
which  I  never  did  before.  I  often  laugh  at  them  now, 
and  let  them  see  me  laughing,  and  Dad  says  to  Mother, 
'There's  Dora  at  her  jokes  again.  What  have  you 
said  ? '  They  know  how  I  love  them.  Dear,  don't  make 
such  awful  faces.  They  were  so  splendid,  you  know." 

"And  Claude?"  asked  his  uncle,  after  a  pause. 


THEOSBORNES  323 

"I  didn't  do  justice,  or  anything  like  it,  to  Claude  till 
then,"  she  said.  "He  used  to  get  on  my  nerves,  too, 
very  badly  indeed.  I  don't  mind  telling  you,  since  I've 
told  him,  and  we've  laughed  over  that.  But  all  that 
time  in  July,  combined  with  something  very  fine  that  I 
found  out  he  had  done,  made  me  see  that  what  got  on 
my  nerves  did  not  matter  in  the  least.  What  mattered 
was  Claude  himself,  whom  I  didn't  know  before." 

"I  love  that  boy,"  said  Uncle  Alf,  with  unusual  tender- 
ness, "and  I'm  glad  you  do,  my  dear,  because  he  deserves 
all  the  love  you  can  give  him.  But  I  am  glad  you  laugh 
at  him,  too.  There's  no  sense  in  not  seeing  the  ridiculous 
side  of  people." 

"Oh  yes,  I  laugh  at  him  often,"  said  Dora.  "I  think 
he  likes  it.  You  see,  he's  so  dreadfully  fond  of  me  that 
he  likes  all  I  do." 

Uncle  Alf  gave  a  contemptuous  sniff. 

"Yes,  he's  off  his  head  about  you,"  he  said.  "  I  thought 
he  had  more  sense.  But  there's  very  little  sense  in  any- 
body when  you  come  to  know  them." 

"I  know:  it's  foolish  of  him,"  said  Dora.  "I  tell  him 
so.  But  then  I'm  foolish  about  him.  I  expect  if  two 
people  are  foolish  about  each  other,  they  can  stand  a  lot 
of  the  other's  folly,  though  I  expect  it  isn't  grammar.  It  is 
rather  nice  to  be  foolish  about  a  man,  if  he  happens  to 
be  your  husband." 

"It  seems  to  me  you  married  him  first,  and  fell  in  love 
with  him  afterward,"  said  Uncle  Alf. 

"That's  exactly  what  I  did  do,"  said  Dora  softly. 

"And  what's  this  fine  thing  Claude  did?"  asked  the 
other.  "Gave  a  cabman  a  sovereign,  I  suppose,  and 


324  THEOSBORNES 

told  him  to  keep  the  change.  Much  he'd  miss  it.  And 
you  thought  that  was  devilish  noble.  Eh?" 

"I  can't  tell  you  what  it  was,"  said  she.  "Nobody 
must  know  that." 

Uncle  Alf  was  silent  a  minute :  he  wanted  to  say  some- 
thing ill-tempered  but  could  not  think  of  anything. 

"Well,  I'm  glad  the  boy's  done  something  to  deserve 
you,  my  dear,"  he  said,  "though  that  sounds  as  if  I  was 
getting  soft-headed,  too,  and  perhaps  I  am,  joining  like 
this  in  this  chorus  of  praise,  this  —  this  domestic  sym- 
phony. But  I  can  stand  you  and  Claude:  what  I  can't 
stand  is  Eddie  and  Maria.  Lord!  if  they  aren't  coming 
out  here,  when  I  thought  I  had  escaped.  She  in  her 
bath  chair,  and  he  pushing  it.  A  man  of  his  age,  and 
as  stout  as  that.  He'll  be  bursting  himself  one  of  these 
days,  and  then  we  shall  have  Maria  making  us  all  sick 
with  telling  us  how  beautifully  he  bore  it,  and  nobody 
behaved  so  bravely  over  a  burst  as  her  Eddie." 

Dora  giggled  hopelessly. 

"Oh!  you  are  such  a  darling,"  she  said.  "I  don't 
mind  what  you  say." 

The  bath  chair  had  approached,  and  Lady  Osborne 
put  down  her  sunshade  as  they  came  into  the  strip  of 
shadow  where  Dora  and  Uncle  Alf  sat.  He  edged  away 
from  her  as  far  as  the  angle  of  the  house  and  the  flower 
beds  would  permit. 

"Well,  and  if  this  isn't  pleasant,"  she  said.  "Eddie, 
my  dear,  we'll  stop  here  a  bit  and  have  a  rest,  if  we're 
not  interrupting,  and  indeed  it's  near  teatime,  and  I 
want  my  tea  badly  to-day,  I  do.  But  my  appetite's  been 
so  good  since  my  operation " 


THE    OSBORNES  325 

Alf  broke  in. 

"Maria,  if  I  hear  any  more  about  you  and  your  opera- 
tion, I  leave  the  house,"  he  said. 

"Well,  and  I'm  sure  that's  the  last  thing  I  want  you  to 
do,"  said  Lady  Osborne  genially,  "for  I'm  enjoying  this 
little  family  party  such  as  never  was.  Why,  all  the  time 
I  was  getting  better  in  London  I  was  looking  forward 
to  it,  and  dreamed  about  it  too.  There  now,  Alf,  don't 
be  so  tetchy,  stopping  your  ears  in  that  manner,  as  if 
you  had  the  neuralgia  and  was  sitting  in  a  draught.  I 
was  only  going  to  say  I'd  been  looking  forward  to  a 
week  or  two  of  quiet  down  here  with  you  all,  and  pleased 
I  was  to  know  that  you  would  join  us,  instead  of  setting 
on  Richmond  Hill  with  the  motors  and  all  buzzing  round 
you  and  raising  clouds  of  dust  with  germs  uncountable. 
Mr.  O.,  my  dear,  you're  all  of  a  perspiration  with  pushing 
me,  and  thank  you.  Won't  you  be  wise  to  put  a  wrap 
on,  same  as  your  brother  does,  when  he  sits  out  of  doors, 
especially  with  you  in  that  heat?" 

"No,  my  dear,  I'm  comfortable  enough.  I  was  only 
wondering  whether  Dora  was  wise  to  sit  here  in  that 
thin  dress.  It'll  strike  chill  before  sunset." 

Dora  again  burst  out  laughing. 

"Dad,  we  shall  drive  Uncle  Alf  off  his  head  if  we  all 
think  so  much  about  each  other,"  she  said.  "He's  been 
making  a  formal  complaint  to  me  about  it.  He  finds 
us  all  very  trying!" 

"And  where's  Claude  and  Jim?"  asked  Alf.  "I  hope 
they're  taking  great  care  of  each  other.  Claude  cut  his 
finger  this  morning,  and  he  bore  it  wonderfully.  Never 
a  cry  nor  a  sob.  But  I  wonder  at  you,  Maria,  letting 


326  THEOSBORNES 

them  ride  horses  all  about  the  country,  without  a  doctor 
or  a  pair  of  surgeons  to  follow  them  in  case  of  accidents. 
They  might  fall  off  and  be  hurt.  A  savage  and  dangerous 
beast  is  a  horse,  and  more  especially  a  mare,  such  as 
Claude  was  riding." 

Lady  Osborne  entirely  refused  to  notice  the  sarcastic 
intent  of  this. 

"Well,  to  be  sure,  we've  all  got  to  take  our  risks,"  she 
said.  "There'd  be  no  sense  in  passing  your  life  wrapped 
up  in  cotton- wool,  and  waiting  for  the  doctor!" 

"Why,  and  you  used  to  ride  too,  when  you  was  a  lad, 
Alf,"  said  her  husband.  "You're  making  Dora  laugh 
at  you.  And  I  don't  wonder:  I  could  laugh  myself!" 

Alf  got  up  from  his  chair. 

"I  think  you'd  both  be  the  better  for  an  operation, 
you  and  Maria,"  he  said.  "I  should  have  a  bit  of  humour 
put  in,  instead  of  a  bit  of  tumour  taken  out.  Not  but 
what  it's  a  far  more  serious  affair.  I  doubt  if  either  of 
you  would  get  over  it." 

"Well,  and  it's  you  who  talked  about  my  tumour 
this  time,"  said  Lady  Osborne  triumphantly. 

This  was  too  much  for  Alf:  he  walked  shufflingly 
back  to  the  house,  leaving  his  sister-in-law  in  possession 
of  the  field.  But  she  used  her  victory  nobly,  with  pity 
for  the  conquered. 

Lady  Osborne  looked  round  in  a  discreet  and  pene- 
trating manner  after  he  had  gone  and  was  out  of  hearing. 

"Dora,  my  dear,  you  mustn't  mind  what  Alf  says," 
she  remarked  with  much  acuteness.  "He  gets  a  bit 
sour  now  and  then,  and  I'm  sure  I  don't  wonder,  with  his 
lumbago,  and  no  one  to  look  after  him.  If  only  he  had 


THEOSBORNES  327 

found  a  nice  girl  to  look  after  him  when  he  was  young! 
Poor  old  Alf!  But  you  can  take  it  from  me  as  knows 
him,  he  doesn't  really  mean  all  he  says.  It's  his  joke, 
and  I'm  not  one  to  quarrel  with  a  joke,  and  bless  him, 
why  shouldn't  he  joke  in  his  own  way  just  as  the  rest 
of  us  do  ?  And  if  sometimes  he  seems  a  bit  ill-humoured 
over  his  joke  —  well,  you  let  him  get  his  bit  of  ill-humour 
off  his  mind,  and  he'll  be  all  the  better  for  it.  I  never 
take  no  notice  and  it  don't  hurt  me.  'Alf  and  his 
joke,'  I  say  over  to  myself,  and  no  harm  done." 

"Rum  old  cove  is  Alf,"  said  her  husband;  "he  seems 
sometimes  to  want  to  quarrel  with  us  all.  But  it  takes 
two  to  make  a  quarrel,  and  he'll  have  hard  work  to  find 
the  second  in  this  house,  if  I  know  who  lives  in  it.  And 
he  was  just  as  anxious  as  he  could  be,  Maria,  when  you 
was  at  your  worst  in  the  summer,  telephoning  five  and 
six  times  in  the  day,  till  I  said  down  the  tube,  'Maria's 
love,  and  she's  asleep  till  morning.'  And  what  it'll  be 
when  Dora  here " 

"Mr.  O.,  you  go  too  far,"  said  his  wife  in  a  shrill 
aside.  "But  as  you  were  saying  about  Alf,  if  there's 
crust  outside  there's  crumb  within.  It's  a  soft  heart 
like  your  own,  Mr.  O.,  though  he  don't  know  it." 

"Dad,  when  last  were  you  angry  with  anybody?" 
asked  Dora.  "Can  you  remember?" 

Lord  Osborne  considered  this:  it  was  a  question  that 
required  research. 

"Well,  my  dear,  if  you  leave  out  things  like  my  being 
angry  with  the  Mother  for  giving  us  all  such  a  fright  last 
July  _  there's  one  for  you,  Maria  —  I  couldn't  rightly 
say.  I  had  a  dishonest  foreman  I  remember  at  the  works 


328  THEOSBORNES 

whom  I  had  to  dismiss,  summary,  too,  one  Monday 
morning,  but  I  think  I  was  more  sorry  for  his  wife  and 
children  than  I  was  angry  with  him.  Nine  children 
there  was,  and  another  expected,  poor  lamb!  and  still- 
born when  it  came,  for  I  inquired." 

Dora  saw  Lady  Osborne  shoot  out  a  furtive  finger  at 
him,  and  he  understood. 

"Then  I  was  angry  with  Claude  one  day,"  he  con- 
tinued, "when  he  was  a  little  lad.  I  think  the  devil 
must  have  been  in  the  boy,  for  what  must  he  do  but  rake 
out  the  fire  from  his  mother's  drawing  room  grate,  and 
dump  it  all  on  the  hearthrug.  And  yet  I  could  scarce 
help  laughing  even  when  I  gave  him  his  spanking.  What 
was  in  the  boy's  head  that  he  should  think  of  a  trick  like 
that?  Perhaps  it  was  his  joke,  too,  something  that  looks 
mischievous  at  first,  like  old  Alf's  jokes.  I'll  take  another 
cup  of  tea,  Mother,  for  here's  Claude  coming  with  Jim, 
and  such  a  tea-pot  drainer  as  Claude  I  never  saw." 

"Yes,  I  doubt  he'll  injure  his  stomach,"  said  Lady 
Osborne,  "for  I'm  told  that  tea  tans  the  coats  of  it  like 
so  much  leather.  Sir  Henry  told  me  so  when  we  were 
having  a  chat  one  morning,  after  he'd  dressed  the  place 
for  me." 

"Well,  the  less  we  know  about  our  insides  the  better, 
to  my  way  of  thinking,"  said  her  husband,  "until  there's 
some  call  to  see  what's  going  on.  Eat  your  dinner  and 
drink  your  wine  and  get  your  sleep  of  nights,  and  you've 
done  what  you  can  to  keep  it  contented." 

"And  I'm  sure  none's  got  a  better  right  to  tell  us  how 
to  keep  well  than  you,  my  dear,"  said  Lady  Osborne 
appreciatively,  "for  bar  a  bit  of  gout  now  and  then,  as  it 


THEOSBORNES  329 

isn't  reasonable  you  should  be  spared,  there's  not  an 
hour's  anxiety  your  health's  given  me  since  first  we  met, 
Mr.  O.,  and  here's  the  boys  ready  for  their  tea,  I'll  be 
bound.  Old  Alf,  and  his  saying  that  he  wondered  at  me 
allowing  them  to  go  horseback!" 

All  this,  these  quiet  ordinary  domestic  conversations, 
as  well  as  things  of  far  greater  import,  had  entirely  changed 
in  character  for  Dora.  But  it  was  for  her  only  that  they 
had  changed;  in  themselves  they  were  exactly  as  they 
had  been  before  there  came  those  days  which,  so  she  put 
it  to  herself,  had  opened  her  eyes  and  given  sight  to  them. 
For  she  had  labelled  them  trivial  or  tiresome,  according 
as  her  own  mood  had  varied,  and  though  discussion  on 
subjects  of  high  artistic  or  spiritual  import  was  not  rare 
but  unknown  among  the  Osbornes,  she  had  now  the 
sense  to  see  that  the  kindly  utterances  of  simple  people 
possibly  illustrated  though  they  did  not  allude  to  qualities 
that  were  not  at  all  trivial.  For  she  saw  now  the  per- 
sonalities that  lay  behind  these  details  of  their  life,  the 
hearts  out  of  which  the  mouths  spoke.  It  was  that  which 
gave  its  tone  to  what  had  become  music:  and  if  Lord 
Osborne  lingered  in  his  cellar  to  find  a  bottle  of  wine  that 
Sir  Thomas  appreciated,  it  was  no  longer  Sir  Thomas's 
undoubted  greediness  that  concerned  her,  but  his  host's 
desire  that  his  guest  should  enjoy  himself.  And  she  knew 
now  that  the  spirit  which  did  not  think  it  trivial  to  see 
that  the  dinner  was  good,  or  that  the  wine  was  plentiful, 
was  perfectly  capable  of  rising  to  higher  levels  than  these. 
When  there  was  a  call  for  courage,  courage  of  a  very 
wonderful  sort  had  answered;  when  endurance  was 


330  THEOSBORNES 

needed,  endurance  was  there;  when  charity,  as  in  the 
case  of  Jim,  the  charity  that  met  the  difficult  and  dis- 
graceful situation  was  complete,  and  had  all  the  fineness 
and  delicacy  which  only  perfect  simplicity  can  give. 
How  Claude  had  done  it  she  did  not  know ;  there  seemed 
no  question  of  finesse  or  of  diplomatic  behaviour.  He 
had  merely  behaved  without  difficulty,  like  Claude,  and 
but  a  few  weeks  afterward  there  was  Jim,  sensitive  and 
highly  strung  as  he  always  was,  staying  with  them  all, 
not  like  a  guest,  but  as  one  of  the  family,  as  Lady  Osborne 
loved  to  think.  And  it  was  not  that  he  was  lacking  in 
the  sense  of  shame  that  made  his  friendship  with  Claude 
possible:  it  was  that  he,  like  Dora,  had  had  his  eyes 
opened.  A  heart  as  kind  as  Claude's  counted  for  some- 
thing after  all:  they  both,  it  must  be  supposed,  had 
taken  it  for  granted  until  it  was  shown  them.  But  the 
sight  of  it,  the  practical  knowledge  of  it,  worked  the 
miracle,  worked  it  easily,  as  if  there  was  no  miracle 
about  it. 

Dora  had  gone  to  her  room  shortly  after  tea  to  rest,  on 
the  diplomatic  prompting  of  her  mother-in-law.  With  so 
many  gentlemen  present,  Lady  Osborne  would  never 
have  said,  "Dora,  the  doctor  told  you  to  rest  for  a  couple 
of  hours  before  dinner,"  but  she  had  reminded  her  that 
she  had  several  letters  to  write  for  the  post.  And  Dora, 
secretly  and  kindly  smiling,  had  remembered  at  once, 
though  (like  the  almug  trees)  there  were  no  such  letters. 
And  with  her  to  her  room  she  took  up  the  parcel  of  thought 
that  has  been  indicated,  for  she  wanted  to  examine  its 
contents  a  little  more  closely  before  Claude  came  up, 
as  he  always  did,  to  read  tQ  he.r  for  a  while  before  she 


THEOSBORNES  331 

dressed.  Right  at  the  bottom  of  the  packet,  she  knew, 
there  lay  something  very  precious.  She  would  look  at 
that  by  and  by,  with  him  perhaps. 

But  in  spite  of  the  preponderance  that  qualities  of  the 
heart  had  now  gained  in  her  mind  compared  to  what 
must  be  called  qualities  of  the  surface,  to  which  belonged 
such  things  as  beauty  and  breeding,  she  found  that  the 
latter  had  not  at  all  lost  their  value.  But  she  saw  such 
things  differently.  They  had  assumed,  so  it  seemed  to 
her,  not  a  truer  value,  but  the  true  value.  She  loved 
Claude's  beauty  more  than  even  in  those  enchanted  days 
of  honeymoon  in  Venice,  not  only  now  because  it  was 
beauty,  but  because  it  was  Claude's,  while  such  super- 
ficial failings  as  were  undoubtedly  his  she  laughed  at 
still,  but  now  without  bitterness  or  irritation.  They 
were  funny:  to  say  a  "handsome  lady"  was  still  ludicrous, 
but  now,  since  it  was  Claude  who  said  it,  it  could  not  help 
being  lovable.  Indeed  she  and  Jim  had  invented  what 
they  called  "The  Claude  Catechism,"  which  began,  "Are 
you  a  handsome  lady?  No,  but  I  am  a  perfect 
gentleman."  And  then  Claude  would  throw  whatever 
was  handiest  at  Jim's  head. 

And  how,  like  Pharaoh,  had  she  at  one  time  hardened 
her  heart,  refusing  to  give  admittance,  so  it  seemed  to  her 
now,  to  that  sunshine  of  beautiful  qualities  that  was 
always  ready  to  stream  in  upon  her.  He  had  never 
failed  her,  he  had  always  been  patient,  waiting  for  the 
door  to  open,  for  the  closed  windows  to  be  unbarred. 
True,  hi  the  early  days  he  thought  they  had  been  unbarred, 
that  he  had  full  admittance,  but  in  the  weeks  that  fol- 
lowed, when  it  was  clear  to  him  that  ingress  was  given 


332  THEOSBORNES 

him  no  longer,  he  had  waited,  waited  without  bitter 
thought  of  her.  She  had  made  him,  after  their  recon- 
ciliation, try  to  explain  what  he  had  felt  to  her,  and  he 
had  done  it,  unwillingly,  but  not  failing  to  answer  her 
questions. 

"You  see  it  was  like  this,  darling,"  he  had  said.  "I 
saw  something  was  wrong,  and  I  tried  to  find  out  if  I  had 
done  anything,  or  how  I  could  set  things  right.  But  it 
didn't  seem  to  me  that  I  had  altered  at  all  —  at  least 
I  knew  I  hadn't  —  toward  you,  from  the  time  that  you 
said  you  loved  me,  and  so  the  best  thing  I  could  do  was 
just  to  keep  on  at  that.  I  thought  of  all  sorts  of  things, 
tried  to  wonder  at  your  reasons  for  not  being  pleased 
with  me.  But  that  was  no  use:  I'd  always  been  myself 
to  you,  and  —  and  I  thought  you  might  care  for  me  again 
later  on.  Of  course  —  I  suppose  it  was  in  a  selfish  way 
—  I  was  glad  when  poor  old  Jim  made  such  a  mistake, 
because  that  gave  me  an  opportunity,  you  see,  to  —  well, 
treat  him  decently.  Not  that  I  ever  thought  it  would  get 
to  your  ears.  However,  it  did:  Jim  was  a  trump  over 
that,  going  and  telling  you.  I  didn't  mean  him  to,  but 
when  it  happened  like  that,  I  couldn't  help  being  pleased. 
You  had  been  a  bit  hard  on  me,  you  know:  thank  God 
you  were,  for  it  makes  it  better  now  that  you  are  not. 
Lord,  what  a  jaw!" 

This  was  the  outcome  of  her  talk  with  him,  but  the 
"jaw"  was  punctuated  by  questions  of  hers.  It  was 
another  Claude  catechism.  But  this  one  was  not  funny, 
nor  had  Jim  any  part  in  it. 

Yes:  she  had  separated  this  man  who  loved  her  into 
packets:  there  was  her  mistake.  First  she  had  loved  his 


THEOSBORNES  333 

beauty,  and  then  had  taken  that  for  granted.  Next  she 
had  felt  growingly  irritated  with  all  in  him  that  did  not 
correspond  to  the  particular  little  tricks  of  conversation 
and  life  in  which  she  had  been  brought  up.  Then  she 
had  got  accustomed  to  those  sterling  qualities  which  she 
had  taken  for  granted  from  the  first.  And  then  had 
come  "the  little  more,"  and  how  much  it  was.  He  had 
but  shown,  in  practical  demonstration,  that  he  was  kind 
and  brave  and  reliable,  all  that  she  had  thought  she  had 
given  him  credit  for  at  first.  But  the  effect  was  immense: 
she  fell  in  love,  at  first  real  sight,  with  his  qualities. 

That  fused  the  whole:  at  last  she  was  in  love  with  the 
man,  not  with  his  face,  not  with  his  character  taken  by 
itself,  but  with  him  as  a  whole.  That  splendid  body  was 
his,  his  too  were  the  greater  splendours  of  character,  and 
if  his  also  were  the  things  dealt  with  in  the  public  Claude 
catechism,  they  were  no  longer  rejected,  they  were  no 
longer  even  accepted,  they  were  welcomed  and  hugged. 
The  reason  for  this  was  plain:  it  was  Claude  who  said 
and  did  all  that  which  was  symbolized  under  the  title 
of  "handsome  lady,"  and  since  it  was  Claude,  it  was  a 
thing  to  be  kissed,  though  laughter  came  too.  He  was 
no  longer  packets:  they  were  fused  into  one  dear  whole, 
the  thought  of  which  and  the  presence  of  which  made  her 
heart  ache  with  tenderness. 

And  now,  thinking  of  these  things,  she  had  a  thirsty 
eye  for  the  opening  of  the  door,  a  thirsty  ear  for  the  sound 
of  his  foot  in  the  passage  outside.  But  she  knew  he  would 
not  come  quite  yet,  for  at  tea  some  silly  discussion  had 
arisen  between  him  and  Jim  as  to  whether  it  was  possible 
to  get  (with  a  run)  from  the  bottom  of  the  terrace  to  the 


334  THEOSBORNES 

lake  in  twelve  strides.  Jim  had  been  vehement  on  the 
impossibility  of  it,  and  though  Claude  cordially  agreed 
that  it  was  a  feat  of  which  Jim  was  pathetically  incapable, 
he  backed  himself  to  do  it  for  the  sum  of  one  shilling. 
Even  now  she  could  hear  him  running  along  the  terrace 
below  the  window,  and  Jim's  voice  counting  the  strides. 

Dora  got  up  and  strolled  on  to  her  balcony.  The 
last  attempt  had  apparently  been  unsuccessful,  for 
Claude  was  starting  again,  and  next  moment  with  great 
strides  his  long  legs  were  taking  him  across  the  grass 
that  sloped  down  to  the  lake.  This  time  it  looked  as  if 
he  would  easily  succeed,  for  the  sixth  leap  had  taken 
him  well  beyond  the  half-distance.  The  eleventh  took 
him  within  a  couple  of  yards  of  the  edge,  and  next  moment 
Dora  joined  in  the  shout  of  laughter  that  came  from  Jim. 
For  it  had  not  apparently  occurred  to  Claude  what  hap- 
pened next,  if  you  leap  at  top  speed  to  the  margin  of  a 
lake.  But  he  knew  now,  as  he  vanished  in  a  fountain  of 
spray.  It  was  the  deep  end  of  the  lake  too. 

Jim  had  collapsed  altogether  on  the  ground  by  the 
time  Claude  swam  to  shore,  and  Dora  was  equally  helpless 
on  the  balcony,  but  by  the  time  the  involuntary  bather 
had  wrung  his  clothes  out,  Jim  had  recovered  sufficiently 
to  find  the  shilling  he  had  lost  to  him. 

"Oh!  it  was  cheap  at  the  price,"  he  said.  "I  wish  it 
had  been  a  florin." 

Claude  walked  up  the  terrace  to  the  house,  leaving 
a  trail  of  water  on  the  paving  stones,  and  in  a  moment 
his  dressing  room  door  opened  with  a  crack,  and  a  head 
and  naked  shoulder  came  round  the  corner. 

"Darling!  I've  been  making  a  fool  of  myself,"  he  said 


THE    OSBORNES  335 

"I  must  change  first,  and  then  shall  I  come  in  to  read 
to  you?" 

"Yes,  do,"  she  said,  still  laughing.  "I  saw  it. 
I  thought  I  should  have  a  fit.  Can't  you  do  it  again 
before  you  change  ?  It  was  too  heavenly." 

"Yes,  if  you  wish,"  said  he.  "But  I  shall  have  to  put 
on  my  wet  clothes  again." 

She  laughed  again. 

"No,  there  would  be  no  *  first  fine  careless  rapture" 
the  second  time,"  she  said. 

"What's  that?"  asked  Claude. 

"Nothing.  Browning.  Change,  and  then  come  and 
read  to  me." 

It  was  not  long  before  he  joined  her,  and  seated  himself 
on  the  floor  by  the  side  of  the  sofa  where  she  lay,  with  his 
back  against  it.  The  book  he  was  reading  was 
"Esmond,"  and  that  evening  they  came  to  the  chapter 
in  which  Harry  comes  home,  on  December  29th,  and 
goes  to  the  service  in  Winchester  Cathedral.  And 

Claude  read : 

"'She  gave  him  her  hand,  her  little  fair  hand:  there 
was  only  her  marriage  ring  on  it.  The  quarrel  was  all 
over.  The  year  of  grief  and  estrangement  had  passed. 
They  had  never  been  separated.' ' 

Dora's  hand  lay  on  her  husband's  arm,  and  he  felt  a 
soft  pressure  of  her  fingers. 

"Oh,  Claude,"  she  said,  "how  nice!    He  was  so  fait! 
ful  and  patient,  and  it  all  came  right." 

He  let  the  book  fall  to  the  ground.  As  soon  as  she 
spoke  he  ceased  to  think  of  Esmond,  and  though  Dora  s 
words  referred  to  him,  she  was  not  thinking  of  him  either. 


336  THEOSBORNES 

"'They  had  never  been  separated,'  "  she  went  on,  still 
quoting,  but  still  not  thinking  of  the  book.  "They 
hadn't  really  been  separated,  because  their  love  was 
present  all  the  time,  but  she  had  let  it  get  covered  up  with 
irritation  and  impatience.  Was  it  like  that  it  happened  ?  " 

"I  can't  remember,"  he  said,  "indeed  I  cannot. 
Everything  seems  unreal  that  isn't  perfect." 

"And  there  is  something  more  coming,"  she  said, 
"coming  soon,  perhaps  in  a  few  days  now.  So  to-night, 
dear,  let  us  talk  a  little  instead  of  reading  even  that  beauti- 
ful chapter.  I  am  glad  we  got  to  it  to-day.  I  like  stop- 
ping just  at  those  very  words,  and  I  want  you  to  tell  me 
just  once,  what  really  I  know  so  well,  that  you  feel  as 
if  we  had  never  been  separated,  that  you  forgive  all  my 
stupidity  and  shallowness.  I  want  to  let  it  all  pass  from 
my  mind  for  ever:  to  know  that  I  needn't  ever  reproach 
myself  any  more.  I  think  I  have  learned  my  lesson :  I  do 
indeed.  Just  tell  me,  if  you  can,  that  you  think  I  have!" 

He  had  turned  himself  about  as  she  spoke,  and  now 
instead  of  sitting  he  knelt  by  her  side,  she  leaning  on  her 
elbow  toward  him.  In  the  humility  of  the  simple  words, 
there  was  something  exquisite  to  him,  they  flooded  his 
heart  with  a  tender  protectiveness. 

"Oh,  my  darling,  you  say  that  to  me!  Indeed,  mdeed, 
I  never  reproached  you." 

Dora  was  still  grave. 

"I  know  that,"  she  said,  "but  I  reproached  myself. 
How  could  I  help  it?  But,  Claude,  the  sting  has 
gone  out  of  my  self-reproach.  I  can't  help  it:  it  has. 
You  have  to  tell  me,  if  you  truly  can,  that  I  needn't  barb 
it  again." 


THEOSBORNES  337 

He  saw  she  wanted  the  direct  answer. 

"You  need  not,"  he  said.  "And  I  think  you  cannot. 
You  can't  make  an  old  bruise  ache  again  when  it  is  well." 

"  Then  it  has  gone,"  she  said.  "  Pull  me  up,  dear,  vvith 
those  strong  hands." 

He  raised  her  to  her  feet,  and  she  clung  to  him  a 
moment. 

"Oh,  Claude!  it  is  getting  near  the  best  time  of  al',1' 
she  said.  "Your  mother  once  told  me  that  to  bear  a 
child  was  the  best  thing  God  ever  thought  of  for  women. 
Oh  dear!  and  she  was  so  funny  at  tea.  Dad  said  some- 
thing about  a  foreman  he  had  discharged  with  nine  chil- 
dren and  another  coming,  and  she  pulled  him  up.  How  . 
beautifully  laughter  and  the  biggest  things  in  the  world 
go  together.  They  don't  interfere  with  one  another  in 
the  least." 

"Lord!  and  to  think  that  once  I  used  to  believe  you 
weren't  respectful  enough  to  Dad  and  her,"  said  he. 

"And  you  were  quite  right.  I  can  laugh  at  them  now 
I  love  them.  It's  that  which  makes  the  difference." 

She  strolled  to  the  window. 

"Let's  come  out  on  the  balcony  for  a  little,"  she  said. 
"What  an  evening!" 

The  sun  had  set,  but  not  long,  and  in  the  west  a  flash 
of  molten  red  lay  along  the  horizon.  That  melted  into 
orange,  which  again  faded  into  pale  green.  Higher  up 
the  sky  was  of  velvet  blue,  and  little  wisps  of  feathery 
cloud  flushed  with  rose  colour  were  flecked  over  it.  The 
stars  were  already  lit,  and  some  noble  planet  near  to  its 
setting  flamed  jewel-like  in  that  green  strip  of  sky. 
Already  the  colours  were  half  withdrawn  from  the  garden 


338  THEOSBORNES 

beds,  but  a  hint  of  the  flower  presences  came  to  them  in 
the  little  fragrant  breeze  that  fluttered  moth-like  in  the 
stillness.  Beyond  lay  the  lake,  screened  from  the  glory 
of  sunset  by  the  tall  clumps  of  rhododendrons  on  its 
far  side,  and  in  the  shadow  the  water  was  dark  and  steel- 
like  in  tone.  Birds  still  chuckled  in  the  bushes,  and  from 
far  away  came  the  pulse  of  some  hurrying  train.  And 
in  the  hush  and  quiet  of  the  hour  they  spoke  together 
of  the  dear  event  that  was  coming  and  would  not  be 
long  delayed. 

"So  I  wanted,"  she  said  at  last,  "to  clear  everything 
off  my  mind  which  could  make  me  look  backward.  I 
want  nothing  to  exist  for  me  except  you  and  our  love  fcr 
each  other.  Even  Dad  and  Mother  must  get  a  little 
dim.  I  can't  explain." 

"I  think  I  understand  very  well,"  said  he. 

"And  you  won't  be  frightened  for  me,  Claude?"  she 
asked.  "Yet  I  needn't  ask  you.  I  saw  what  you  were 
when  mother  was  ill." 

He  did  not  answer. 

"What  then,  dear?"  asked  Dora. 

"Well,  it's  you,  you  see,  now,"  he  said.  "I  can't  help 
it.  But  I'll  do  my  best." 

A  week  more  passed  quietly  enough.  Lady  Austell 
arrived,  and  that  somehow  was  the  last  straw  for  Uncle 
Alf,  for  she  was  so  extraordinarily  appropriate,  and  he 
persuaded  Jim  to  come  back  to  Richmond  with  him. 
Lady  Austell  had  very  thoughtfully  let  the  house  at  Deal 
most  advantageously  for  the  whole  month  of  September, 
and  intended  to  have  a  nice  long  stay  at  Grote.  Really 


THEOSBORNES  339 

it  was  quite  too  wonderful  that  Dora's  baby  should  be 
born  at  Grote.     It  was  a  clear  case  of  special  Providence. 

Then  came  a  day  when  the  house  was  very  still,  and 
the  hot  hours  passed  with  leaden  foot.  To  Claude  it 
seemed  that  the  morning  would  never  pass  to  noon,  and 
when  noon  was  over  each  hour  the  more  seemed  an  eternity 
twice  told.  But  just  before  sunset  there  was  heard  the 
cry  of  a  child. 

Later,  he  was  allowed  to  see  Dora  for  a  moment,  and 
in  a  cot  by  her  bed,  tiny  and  red  and  crumpled,  lay  that 
which  had  come  into  the  world. 

1  'Oh  Claude!"  she  said  softly,  as  he  came  up  to  her 
bed,  "all  three  of  us  —  you  and  your  son  and  L" 


THE    END 


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Miller  White.  Illust.  by  Howard  Chandler  Christy. 

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laughter  to  the  play-goers. --—=—===== 

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Full  page  vignette  illustrations  by  M.  Leone  Bracken 

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Illustrated  by  Will  Grefe. 

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by  Thomas  Fogarty.     Elaborate  wrapper  in  colors. 

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Roberts.    Illustrated  by  H.  Sandham. 
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Roberts.    Illustrated  by  E.  McConnell. 
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LOUIS  TRACY'S 

CAPTIVATING  AND  EXHILARATING  ROMANCES 

THE  STOWAWAY  GIRL.    Illustrated  by  Nesbitt  Benson. 

The  story  of  a  shipwreck,  a  lovely  girl  who  shipped  stow- 
away fashion,  a  rascally  captain,  a  fascinating  young  officer 
and  thrilling  adventure  enroute  to  South  America. 
THE  CAPTAIN  OF  THE  KANSAS. 

A  story  of  love  and  the  salt  sea — of  IThelpless  ship  whirled 
into  the  hands  of  cannibal  Fuegians — of  desperate  fighting 
and  a  tender  romance.    A  story  of  extraordinary  freshness. 
THE  MESSAGE.     Illustrated  by  Joseph  Cummings  Chase. 

A  bit  of  parchment  many,  many  years  old,  telling  of  a 
priceless  ruby  secreted  in  ruins  far  in  the  interior  of  Africa  is 
the  "  message  "  found  in  the  figurehead  of  an  old  vessel.  A 
mystery  develops  which  the  reader  will  follow  with  breathless 
interest. 
THE  PILLAR  OF  LIGHT. 

The  pillar  thus  designated  was  a  lighthouse,  and  the  au- 
thor tells  with  exciting  detail  the  terrible  dilemma  of  its  cut- 
off inhabitants  and  introduces  the  charming  comedy  of  a  man 
eloping  with  his  own  wife. 
THE  RED  YEAR:    A  Story  of  the  Indian  Mutiny. 

The  never-to-be-forgotten  events  of  1857  form  the  back- 
ground of  this  story.  The  hero  who  begins  as  lieutenant  and 
ends  as  Major  Malcolm,  has  as  stirring  a  military  career  as 
the  most  jaded  novel  reader  could  wish.  A  powerful  book. 
THE  WHEEL  O'FORTUNE.  With  illustrations  by  James 
Montgomery  Flagg. 

The  story  deals  with  the  finding  of  a  papyrus  containing 
the  particulars  of  the  hiding  of  some  of  the  treasures  of  the 
Queen  of  Sheba.  The  glamour  of  mystery  added  to  the 
romance  of  the  lovers,  gives  the  novel  an  interest  that  makes 
it  impossible  to  leave  until  the  end  is  reached. 
THE  WINGS  OF  THE  MORNING. 

A  sort  of  Robinson  Crusoe  redi-vivus^  with  modern  settings 
and  a  very  pretty  love  story  added.  The  hero  and  heroine  are 
the  only  survivors  of  a  wreck,  and  have  adventures  on  their 
desert  island  such  as  never  could  have  happened  except  in  a 
story. 

GROSSET  &  DUNLAP,  526  WEST  26th  ST.,  NEW  YORK 


FAMOUS  COPYRIGHT  BOOKS 
IN  POPULAR  PRICED  EDITIONS 

^  Re-issues  of  the  great  literary  successes  of  the  time.  Library 
size.  Printed  on  excellent  paper — most  of  them  with  illustra- 
tions of  marked  beauty — and  handsomely  bound  in  cloth. 
Price,  75  cents  a  volume,  postpaid. 

LAVENDER  AND  OLD  LACE.    By  Myrtle  Reed. 

A  charming  story  of  a  quaint  corner  of  New  England  where  bygone 
romance  finds  a  modern  parallel.  One  of  the  prettiest,  sweetest,  and 
quaintest  of  old-fashioned  love  stories  *  *  *  A  rare  book,  ex- 
quisite in  spirit  and  conception,  full  of  delicate  fancy,  of  tenderness, 
of  delightful  humor  and  spontaneity.  A  dainty  volume,  especially 
suitable  for  a  gift 

DOCTOR  LUKE   OF  THE   LABRADOR.     By  Norman 
Duncan.    With  a  frontispiece  and  inlay  cover. 

How  the  doctor  came  to  the  bleak  Labrador  coast  and  there  in  say- 
ing life  made  expiation.  In  dignity,  simplicity,  humor,  in  sympathetic 
etching  of  a  sturdy  fisher  people,  and  above  all  in  the  echoes  of  the 
sea,  Doctor  Luke  is  worthy  of  great  praise.  Character,  humor,  poign- 
ant pathos,  and  the  sad  grotesque  conjunctions  of  old  and  new  civili- 
zations are  expressed  through  the  medium  of  a  style  that  has  distinc- 
tion and  strikes  a  note  of  rare  personality. 

THE  DAY'S  WORK.    By  Rudyard  Kipling.    Illustrated. 

The  London  Morning  Post  says :  "  It  would  be  hard  to  find  better 
reading  *  *  *  the  book  is  so  varied,  so  full  of  color  and  life  from 
end  to  end,  that  few  who  read  the  first  two  or  three  stories  will  lay  it 
down  till  they  have  read  the  last— and  the  last  is  a  veritable  gem 
*  *  *  contains  some  of  the  best  of  his  highly  vivid  work  *  ' 
Kipling  is  a  bom  story-teller  and  a  man  of  humor  into  the  bargain. 

ELEANOR  LEE.    By  Margaret  E.  Sangster.    With  a  front- 
ispiece. 

A  story  of  married  life,  and  attractive  picture  of  wedded  bliss  •  * 
an  entertaining  story  or  a  man's  redemption  through  a  woman's  love 
»  *  *  no  one  who  knows  anything  of  marriage  or  parenthood  can 
read  this  story  with  eyes  that  are  always  dry  •  '  *  goes  straight 
to  the  heart  of  every  one  who  knows  the  meaning  of  "  love  and 
«  home." 

THE   COLONEL  OF  THE  RED  HUZZARS.    By  John 
Reed  Scott    Illustrated  by  Clarence  F.  Underwood. 

« Full  of  absorbing  charm,  sustained  interest,  and  a  wealth  of 
thrilling  and  romantic  situations.  "  So  naively  fresh  in  its  handling, 
so  plausible  through  its  naturalness,  that  it  comes  like  a  mountain 
breeze  across  the  far-spreading  deeert  of  similar  romances.  —Gatette- 
Ttmes,  Pittsburg.  "  A  slap-dashing  day  romance."— New  York  Sun, 

GROSSET  &  DUNLAP,  NEW  YORK 


FAMOUS  COPYRIGHT   BOOKS 
IN   POPULAR   PRICED   EDITIONS 

Re-issues  of  the  great  literary  successes  of  the  time.  Library 
size.  Printed  on  excellent  paper — most  of  them  with  illustra- 
tions of  marked  beauty — and  handsomely  bound  in  cloth. 
Price,  75  cents  a  volume,  postpaid. 

THE   SPIRIT   OF   THE  SERVICE.     By  Edith  Elmer 

Wood.  With  illustrations  by  Rufus  Zogbaum. 
The  standards  and  life  of  "  the  new  navy"  are  breezily  set  forth 
with  a  geuuine  ring  impossible  from  the  most  gifted  "outsider." 
"  The  story  of  the  destruction  of  the  '  Maine,'  and  of  the  Battle  of 
Manila,  are  very  dramatic.  The  author  is  the  daughter  of  one  naval 
officer  and  the  wift  of  another.  Naval  folks  will  find  much  to  inter" 
est  them  in '  The  Spirit  of  the  Service.'  "—The  Book  Buyer. 

A  SPECTRE  OF  POWER.    By  Charles  Egbert  Craddock. 

Miss  Murfree  has  pictured  Tennessee  mountains  and  the  mountain 
people  in  striking  colors  and  with  dramatic  vividness,  but  goes  back 
to  the  time  of  the  struggles  of  the  French  and  English  in  the  early 
eighteenth  century  for  possession  of  the  Cherokee  territory.  The 
story  abounds  in  adventure,  mystery,  peril  and  suspense, 

THE  STORM  CENTRE.    By  Charles  Egbert  Craddock. 

A  war  story ;  but  more  of  flirtation,  love  and  courtship  than  of 
fighting  or  history.  The  tale  is  thoroughly  readable  and  takes  its 
readers  again  into  golden  Tennessee,  into  the  atmosphere  which  has 
distinguished  all  of  Miss  Murfree 's  novels. 

THE  ADVENTURESS.  By  Coralie  Stanton.  With  colo» 
frontispiece  by  Harrison  Fisher,  and  attractive  inlay  cover 
in  colors. 

As  a  penalty  for  her  crimes,  her  evil  nature,  her  flint-like  callous- 
ness, her  more  than  inhuman  cruelty,  her  contempt  for  the  laws  of 
God  and  man,  she  was  condemned  to  bury  her  magnificent  personal- 
ty, her  transcendent  beauty,  her  superhuman  charms,  in  gilded 
obscurity  at  a  King's  left  hand.  A  powerful  story  powerfully  told. 

THE    GOLDEN    GREYHOUND.     A  Novel  by  Dwight 

Tilton.    With  illustrations  by  E.  Pollak. 

A  thoroughly  good  story  that  keeps  you  guessing  to  the  very  end, 
and  never  attempts  to  instruct  or  reform  you.  It  is  a  strictly  up-to- 
date  story  of  love  and  mystery  with  wireless  telegraphy  and  all  the 
modern  improvements.  The  events  nearly  all  take  place  on  a  big 
Atlantic  liner  and  the  romance  of  the  deep  is  skilfully  made  to  serve 
as  a  setting  for  the  romance,  old  as  mankind,  yet  always  new,  in- 
volving our  hero. 

GROSSET  &  DUNLAP,     T"    NEW  YORK 


A  FEW  OF 

GROSSET  &  DUNLAP'S 
Great  Books  at  Little  Prices 

THE  MUSIC  MASTER.    By  Charles  Klein.     Illustrated 

by  John  Rae. 

This  marvelously  vivid  narrative  turns  upon  the  search  of  a  Ger- 
man musician  in  New  York  for  his  little  daughter.  Mr.  Klein  has 
well  portrayed  his  pathetic  struggle  with  poverty,  his  varied  expe- 
riences in  endeavoring  to  meet  the  demands  of  a  public  not  trained 
to  an  appreciation  of  the  classic,  and  his  final  great  hour  when,  in 
the  rapidly  shifting  events  of  a  big  city,  his  little  daughter,  now  a 
beautifnl  young  woman,  is  brought  to  his  very  door.  A  superb  bit 
of  fiction,  palpitating  with  the  life  of  the  great  metropolis.  The 
play  in  which  David  Warfield  scored  his  highest  success. 

DR.    LAVENDAR'S    PEOPLE.      By    Margaret   Deland. 
Illustrated  by  Lucius  Hitchcock. 

Mrs.  Deland  won  so  many  friends  through  Old  Chester  Tales 
that  this  volume  needs  no  introduction  beyond  its  title.  The  lova- 
ble doctor  is  more  ripened  in  this  later  book,  and  the  simple  come- 
dies and  tragedies  of  the  old  village  are  told  with  dramatic  charm. 
OLD  CHESTER  TALES.  By  Margaret  Deland.  Illustrated 
by  Howard  Pyle. 

Stories  portraying  with  delightful  humor  and  pathos  a  quaint  peo- 
ple in  a  sleepy  old  town.  Dr.  Lavendar,  a  very  human  and  lovable 
"  preacher,"  is  the  connecting  link  between  these  dramatic  stories 
from  life. 

HE  FELL  IN  LOVE  WITH  HIS  WIFE.    By  E.  P.  Roe. 
With  frontispiece. 

The  hero  is  a  farmer—  a  man  with  honest,  sincere  views  of  lite. 
Beieft  of  his  wife,  his  home  is  cared  for  by  a  succession  of  domes- 
tics of  varying  degrees  of  inefficiency  until,  from  a  most  unpromis- 
ing source,  comes  a  young  woman  who  not  only  becomes  his  wife 
but  commands  his  respect  and  eventually  wins  his  love.    A  bright 
and  delicate  romance,  revealing  on  both  sides  a  love  that  surmounts 
all  difficulties  and  survives  the  censure  of  friends  as  well  as  th 
terness  of  enemies. 
THE  YOKE.    By  Elizabeth  Miller. 

Against  the  historical  background  of  the  days  when  the  children 
of  Israel  were  delivered  from  the  bondage  of  Egypt,  the  author  hi 
sketched  a  romance  of  compelling  charm.   A  biblical  novel  as  great 
as  any  since  "  Ben  Hur." 
SAUL  OF  TARSUS.    By  Elizabeth  Miller.    Illustrated  by 

htscenes  ofthifsfory  are  laid  in  Jerusalem,  Ale«ndna,  Rome 


most  remarkable  religious  romance. 


GROSSET  &  DUNLAP,  526  WEST  26th  ST.,  NEW  YORK 


THE  MASTERLY  AND  REALISTIC  NOVELS  OF 

FRANK  NORRIS 

Handsomely  bound  in  cloth.     Price,  75  cents  per  volume,  postpaid. 

THE  OCTOPUS.    A  Story  of  California 

Mr.  Norris  conceived  the  ambitious  idea  of  writing  a  trilogy  of 
novels  which,  taken  together,  shall  symbolize  American  life  as  a 
whole,  with  all  its  hopes  and  aspirations  and  its  tendencies,  through- 
out the  length  and  breadth  of  the  continent.  And  for  the  central 
symbol  he  nas  taken  wheat,  as  being  quite  literally  the  ultimate 
source  of  American  power  and  prosperity.  The  Octopus  is  a  story  of 
wheat  raising  and  railroad  greed  in  California.  It  immediately  made 
a  place  for  itself. 

It  is  full  of  enthusiasm  and  ppetry  and  conscious  strength.      One 
cannot  read  it  without  a  responsive  thrill  of  sympathy  for  the  earnest- 
ness, the  breadth  of  purpose,  the  verbal  power  of  the  man. 
THE  PIT.    A  Story  of  .Chicago. 

This  powerful  novel  is  the  fictitious  narrative  of  a  deal  in  the  Chi- 
cago wheat  pit  and  holds  the  reader  from  the  beginning.  In  a  masterly 
way  the  author  has  grasped  the  essential  spirit  of  the  great  city  by  the 
lakes.  The  social  existence,  the  gambling  in  stocks  and  produce,  the 
characteristic  life  in  Chicago,  form  a  background  for  an  exceedingly 
vigorous  and  human  tale  of  modern  life  and  love. 

A  MAN'S  WOMAN. 

A  story  which  has  for  a  heroine  a  girl  decidedly  out  of  the  ordinary 
run  of  fiction.  It  is  most  dramatic,  containing  some  tremendous  pic- 
tures of  the  daring  of  the  men  who  are  trying  to  reach  the  Pole  *  *  * 
but  it  is  at  the  same  time  essentially  a  woman's  book,  and  the  story 
works  itself  out  in  the  solution  of  a  difficulty  that  is  continually  pre- 
sented in  real  life — the  wife's  attitude  in  relation  to  her  husband  when 
both  have  well-defined  careers. 

McTEAGUE.    A  Story  of  San  Francisco. 

"  Since  Bret  Harte  and  the  Forty-niner  no  one  has  written  of  Cali- 
fornia life  with  the  vigor  and  accuracy  of  Mr.  Norris.  His  '  McTeague' 
settled  his  right  to  a  place  in  American  literature ;  and  he  has  now 
presented  a  third  novel, '  Blix,'  which  is  in  some  respects  the  finest 
and  likely  to  be  the  most  popular  of  the  three." — Washington  Times. 

BLIX. 

"  Frank  Norris  has  written  in  '  Blix '  just  what  such  a  woman's  name 
would  imply — a  story  of  a  frank,  fearless  girl  comrade  to  all  men  who 
are  true  and  honest  because  she  is  true  and  honest.  How  she  saved 
the  man  she  fishes  and  picnics  with  in  a  spirit  of  outdoor  platonic  friend- 
ship, makes  a  pleasant  story,  and  a  perfect  contrast  to  the  author's 
'McTeague.'  A  splendid  and  successful  story." — Washington 
Times. 

GROSSET  &  DUNLAP,  Publishers,         -         -         New  York 


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